


Six Proverbs to Live By

by neverfaraway



Series: Six Proverbs to Live By [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Bisexual Male Character, Canon Compliant, Dean Winchester Has Issues, Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can't Wait, First Time, Fix-It of Sorts, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Episode: s12e12 Stuck In The Middle (With You), Post-Episode: s15e09 The Trap, Season/Series 14, Season/Series 15, Spoilers, When Is It Not With These Two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:08:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25654168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverfaraway/pseuds/neverfaraway
Summary: Two months ago, Dean almost summoned the courage to ask for what he wanted.Or, Dean and Castiel's ongoing struggle with the concept of happiness: set between 9x06 'Heaven Can't Wait' and 15x10 'The Heroes' Journey'.[Complete - final chapter posted.]
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Six Proverbs to Live By [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859959
Comments: 21
Kudos: 133





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to the playlist for this story here: [ Sacrilege](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/51eHSqbao8MAz4G2VlESPU?si=wMhXOnUQRYGYjyX4ff3zjA)

[ ](https://imgur.com/ROTgVnP)

**Whoever loves a quarrel loves sin;  
whoever builds a high gate invites destruction.**  
_Proverbs 17: 19_

**Oshkosh, Wisconsin - 2017**

Dean loves giving head. No point in being coy about it; he’s got Cas’s dick nudging the back of his throat and he’s swallowing around it like it’s a popsicle on the 4th of July.

He’s given blowjobs in truck stop rest rooms, on his knees with some asshole grunting about how pretty Dean looks swallowing his dick; he’s sprawled across beds with his cock squashed up against his belly, rutting slow against the sheets while he takes a guy to pieces with his lips and his tongue and his clever, daring fingers. He don’t publicise it; ain’t nobody ever needed to know except him and the dude in question, but there’s no two ways about it: Dean Winchester loves sucking dick. He loves eating pussy, too; gets off on getting ‘em off, regardless, but that’s irrelevant to the situation at hand. 

The problem is that Dean’s going to come in his pants before he starts to show Cas half of what he’s capable of, because Cas is going freakin’ wild for it. Not in a watched-too-much-porn way, like the dudes who enjoy hissing unimaginative, borderline-offensive crap into the close air of a toilet cubicle, that has Dean pulling an orgasm out of them and booking it before they can offer to reciprocate. He’s had more than enough of that, over the years. Cas has barely said a word, since they got down to business, since Dean lost what was left of his mind, leaned over the console and licked his lips with one hand on the buckle of Cas’s belt.

“Dean,” he'd said, so low it reverberated in Dean’s ribcage. It hadn’t sounded like encouragement, but it hadn’t sounded like censure, either, so Dean had hovered, unsure, while Cas stared at him, inscrutable and dark-eyed. 

“Cas,” he’d said, hoarse, uncomfortably close to pleading, and Cas had swallowed before settling the matter by lifting a hand to help undo his belt. 

Well. That had been that. Dean Winchester was about to suck a dick, and Cas was nudging his suddenly clumsy fingers out of the way and flicking his buckle and the button of his slacks open with a deftness that sent a jolt of lust straight to the recesses of Dean’s brain.

Between them they’d got Cas’s tragic white boxers far enough down his hips for Dean to reach in and free him. Cas’s slacks were open on his thighs and barely out of the way, which he might regret later, when they had to skulk back to the motel looking like they hadn’t just fucked in the car, but Dean didn’t give enough of a shit to warn him. Not with Cas sitting back in the passenger seat, his wide, serious eyes focused on Dean’s as Dean reached for him and wrapped a hand around his dick, gratified to find it hard and already leaking at the tip.

Dean’s typical gambit, at this point, would have been to make a wisecrack about the dude being keen, but Cas’s hand was clenching and unclenching in the fabric bunched around his thighs and he looked so tense he might as well have been connected to the mains. Dean felt it, too. It was always the same after a case turned into a shit show, except this time, instead of heading out to a bar to find an anonymous body to tumble into, he was jacking Cas slow and steady, watching the color rise in Cas’s cheeks. It made him look acutely human, and Dean wanted to crawl across the bench seat and press their mouths together to chase the shaky breath that Cas was trying hard to disguise.

It wasn't that kind of deal; Dean's a veteran of the parking lot hook-up. Blowin’ off steam don’t require knowledge of the taste of the inside of Cas’s open mouth. The shit that just went down with Ramiel, watching Cas slip through his fingers on the floor of that goddamned barn, the things Castiel had said and then stumbled over, so that Dean didn’t know what he meant or even if he really meant it… it was all inside his head, clamouring too loud, making it impossible to think, but Cas was trembling, alive, beneath his hands. Dean turned his attention to the cock in his fist, taking a moment to consider his approach.

It was possible that Dean was about to provide Cas with an entirely novel experience. He’d dwelt, occasionally, on the question of what exactly Cas and the reaper had gotten up to (twice, his brain supplied, unsolicited), and he'd brooded over Meg and exactly what the perks of being Cas’s very own Nurse Ratched might have entitled her to, because that shit was hot, but plain wrong. There was still every chance that this was about to be Cas’s first blowjob, and he was going to get his brain sucked out through his dick, if Dean had anything to do with it. If Cas was still forming coherent syllables by the time Dean was through with him, he’d consider it a personal failure. 

“This ok?” he asked, because he liked to know he had consent before he swallowed a person’s junk. 

“Dean,” Cas said again, quiet and distressed. His fingers were still clenched in the fabric of his pants and he was staring at Dean with what might have passed for the angelic version of wanton desperation. “ _Please_.”

If Dean wasn’t already hard as a rock, he’d have been light-headed, the way all his blood headed south. Short of the world literally ending, there wasn’t a thing in the universe going to get in the way of him giving Cas the best damn beej an angel had ever received. He was about to re-write the history of celestial-human relations, one swipe of his tongue at a time. 

Which was how he found himself here, Cas’s cock at the back of his throat, his eyes watering, his lips meeting the fist he circled around the base, and it’s the best damn thing he’s felt in months. It’s sharp and it’s vital and he’s going to need to pull off and breathe, but not yet, not while he’s swallowing and Cas is quietly falling to pieces, right under Dean’s hands.

Dean’s nearly exhausted his extensive repertoire, by this point, and there’s an urgency to the way Cas is writhing in his seat and trying so hard not to, so Dean’s stopped teasing. He’s sucked soft kisses to the base of him, drawing Cas's balls into his mouth, nudging a knuckle behind them, loving the way Cas responds to him without meaning to, but he’s abandoned it, now, in favour of dedicating himself to the business of getting Cas off so hard he sees stars.

He’s trying so hard to mind his manners, Dean can tell: he’s bucking minutely into the heat of Dean’s mouth, but he keeps catching himself, holding himself back from really going for it. He’s not even sure Cas knows what he wants, so he takes pity on him and grabs hold of the hand that’s been clutching at the edge of the car seat, guiding it to the back of his head and pressing enough to give Cas the idea. Cas moans brokenly and pushes his fingers through Dean’s hair, his hips shifting forwards, pushing him further down Dean’s throat. 

It’s fucking perfect. Dean knows what he looks like, like this: tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, flushed and covered in spit, his knuckles and his chin shiny with his own saliva, and he glances up at Cas swiftly, catches Cas gazing down at him through slit eyes as though the very sight of him is painful. When Dean meets his gaze, pulling off far enough that Cas lies heavy and thick along the length of his tongue, Cas’s head falls back against the headrest and his eyes screw shut as though he’s overwhelmed. Dean is sympathetic.

It’s too fucking good: the weight of Cas’s hand on the back of his head, urging him on; the way Cas is bucking into his mouth and Dean’s trying to match his pace with the movement of his fist. 

“Dean,” Cas says, desperately, his fingers tight in Dean’s hair, hips rising all the way off the seat. Dean gets a thumb through his belt loop, holds him down, and Cas shudders straight over the precipice.

Dean takes him through it, hears the shocked, choked cry just before Cas pulses on his tongue, and swallows around him. He lets Cas lie there heavy, twitching, digs his fingertips softly into Cas’ thigh. Cas is panting above him, sounding wrecked and human in a way that makes Dean want to pin him down and blow his mind all over again.

It’s a number of hazy moments before he lets Cas slip from his mouth, resting the side of his face against Cas’s cool, clean skin. He’s dizzy with want, rutting lazily against the edge of the seat. He rucks up Cas’s shirt with one spit-damp hand, wanting to scuff him up, to ruffle him the way Dean feels ruffled. Mess him up, good and proper. He presses his mouth to the thin skin over Cas’s stomach, over his ribs, at his side, where Dean had seen the wound and the spreading, black, putrid infection. He’s mouthing at it, nonsense words, things he’d never own up to in the light of day with more than a couple inches of air between them.

The corner of his mouth is wet with Cas’s come and he lifts a shaking hand to wipe it as he shifts backwards, a little way further across the warm leather.

Cas is staring at him. His lower lip’s red, like he’s bitten it, and his chest is heaving, even though Dean knows he has no biological need to breathe. He looks dishevelled, with his dick soft and damp against his thigh, and it’s the best, most beautiful thing Dean has seen in a long, long time. Acknowledging it sets off a volley of nervous firecrackers in his chest, because blowin’ off steam don’t require treating each other with sweetness, either. 

Cas reaches out a hand between them and Dean almost flinches, bewildered when Cas touches the pad of his thumb to the skin at the corner of his eye, where there’s a fine map of creases. Jesus fuckin’ Christ, he’s swiping gently at the dampness left by Dean’s watering eyes when he choked on Cas’s dick.

“Dean,” he rumbles, in a voice so cracked and jagged it makes Dean’s aching cock jump inside his jeans. His other hand has landed on Dean’s shoulder, his thumb stroking the sweat-damp skin of his throat. 

He’s fairly sure Cas is going to close the distance between them and kiss him: he’s telegraphing his intent, with his eyes on Dean’s slick mouth. It’s not part of the deal, but Cas doesn’t know the rules, why should he, and why should Dean care? Why shouldn’t he let Cas press his mouth against his and haul him along the bench seat to clamber into his lap? He can see it, in a flash, his knees on either side of Cas’s hips, his jeans pushed down far enough for Cas to get a hand on him, rutting up into it with his hands on Cas’s shoulders, his tongue in Cas's mouth, and he wants it in a way he hasn’t wanted anything in months, maybe even years. 

“Dean,” Cas murmurs again, his thumb heavy in the hollow above Dean’s collarbone, waiting for him to make his move. 

Dean jumps just about out of his goddamn skin when a fist hammers on the roof of the car. Cas jerks away from him, grabbing for his pants.

A face appears at the window, formless and imprecise through the fogged up glass, and a voice yells: “Take it someplace else, before I call the cops!”

Dean flushes red from his toes to the roots of his hair. He’s not one to be easily embarrassed, he’s enjoyed exhibitionism as much as the next guy, in his time, but what the hell was he thinking putting the moves on Cas in the corner of a shitty parking lot, with the lights of the diner reflecting wetly off the asphalt.

Cas is staring at him, pressed into the passenger seat, his hands scrabbling to pull up his underwear and tug his slacks up over his hips, and Dean pulls himself together, twists the keys in the ignition, jams the stick into reverse.

The sound of laughter follows them out of the parking lot.

  


* * *

  


In Purgatory, he’d got used to the intimacy of sharing food, sharing warmth, sharing breath with Cas and with Benny, when one of them was on watch and the other two snatched an hour’s rest. He’d got used to waking up with his own rank breath hot against his face, his nose pushed into the back of Cas’s neck, his hands jammed between them to keep out the cold. There hadn’t been time for feigning embarrassment, for second-guessing the way Cas had felt like an extension of his own body, those last couple of months before they found the rift. There hadn’t been time for missing it, until Cas showed up again and managed to communicate, by his utter failure to acknowledge that Dean had anything to feel awkward about, that what happened in Purgatory, stayed there.

Dean’s thinking about that, about cramming himself back into a familiar, well-worn shape, as though nothing at all had changed, on the drive back from Wisconsin.

It had been a hell of a couple of days. It had been a fucked up plan and a _Prince_ of freakin’ _Hell_ and crouching by Cas’s side while he made teary eyes and told Dean - told _them_ \- that he loved them, while he rotted from the inside out.

Dean is done. He and Sam are nine hours out from Lebanon on the 151 and Dean is done with the whole fucking thing. The adrenaline has ebbed and drained out of him and suddenly he’s wrung-out and exhausted, peering into the taillights of Cas’s truck and trying not to faceplant into the steering wheel.

“Dude, I gotta take a break.”

Sam jolts awake in the passenger seat, wiping drool off his chin with the back of his hand. “What?”

“I’m done, gotta take a break.”

Sam scrubs a hand over his face. “I’d say I’d drive, but dude, I’m wiped.”

“Motel, a mile back?”

“I’ll call Cas.”

  


* * *

  


Looking back, that’s when it all started to fall apart. Cas disappeared hours later, and then he ran off to North Cove with Kelly, and Dean can’t even blame him, not that he hasn’t tried. It’s been dominoes falling, ever since: death and grief and mourning and return. Anger and forgiveness. Wash, rinse, repeat.

  


* * *

  


They went out to get food.

Cas had pulled up outside the motel and climbed out of the truck looking rumpled and alive and mildly annoyed at the delay, and Dean had gone weak at the knees; honest-to-god weak, like he needed to get Cas underneath his hands or he’d fall down on his ass in the parking lot.

“Hey,” he’d croaked. “Who wants burgers?”

Sam had shrugged and muttered something about salad, stumbling off to get them a room, and Cas had stood there impassively, as though he was debating getting back on the road and leaving them to it.

“Great,” Dean had said, before Cas could make his escape. “Cas, you comin’?"

So, they went out to get food. Cas folded himself into the passenger seat of the Impala and they parked in the lot outside the diner off the highway and Dean intended to get out of the car, he swears he did. He meant to fetch burgers and beer and get them straight back to the motel.

The problem was that Cas was sitting next to him, hale and hearty, peering at Dean with concern, about to start asking why Dean’s hands were trembling on the steering wheel.

“Dean, what I said in the barn -”

Dean reached a hand across the space between them just to stop Cas from talking.

Now, on the short drive back to the motel, where Dean will have to explain why he’s come back empty-handed and Sam will want to know why he and Cas can’t look each other in the eye, Cas extends a hand tentatively between them; it’s more than Dean can bear. If Cas touches him, it’ll set off the chain reaction again, he’s too tired and wrung-out and relieved to stop it.

He doesn’t mean to snap, he never means to, it’s just sometimes it’s the only way he can stop the words falling out too naked and revealing. “Keep your hands to your damned self.”

Cas flinches as though burned, tucking himself back into his side of the bench seat. It might as well be a mile long, with how far away he feels, but Dean wishes it were further. He wishes he’d just kept it together, and never done anything as foolish as thinking getting up into Cas’s space might fix the skittering, panicking feeling that’s been rattling around inside of him since they drove away from that goddamned barn.

“Dean, we have a lot to talk about,” Cas says, low and tight and unhappy, just before they reach the motel.

Dean can’t bear to answer him. Cas makes a disappointed, furious noise in the back of his throat when he’s ignored and turns to stare resolutely out of the window.

Dean turns up the music and Ian Anderson asks him to lend an ear while he calls him a fool. He flexes his hands on the steering wheel and pretends he doesn’t know just how badly he’s fucked up.


	2. Chapter 2

**The fining pot is for silver, the furnace for gold: but the Lord trieth the hearts.**  
_Proverbs 17:3_

**Lebanon, Kansas - 2019**

“Hey, Mom.”

Dean’s standing in the doorway looking like he’s got plenty to say and no idea how to go about saying it.

It’s been a couple weeks since he called to tell her about Michael. She was chasing a report of demons through backwoods in Connecticut, so she missed two calls and had to wait until she got back to her motel room, bloodied and caked to her knees in mud, to sit through a voicemail in which Dean relayed the news: “Michael’s dead. A lot of the hunters, too; we’ve started the funerals, but it’ll probably be a few days. If you can make it, Sam’d be glad to see you.”

She beckons him inside. Every day she thanks God - well, she thanks someone - for the chance to see her boys grown like this. Sam, with his quiet air of confidence, and Dean with none of that beneath the swagger, just acres of guilt and pigheadedness keeping him in one piece. She got in from Connecticut in the early hours and since then Dean’s been up in the garage all day, under the chassis of the Impala, hiding from Sam and the evidence of his grief. Cas has been wandering listlessly between the two of them trying to tape their jagged edges back together, like they're a broken cup that can be mended. Jack has mostly been quiet and bewildered, sitting reading comic books in his room and staring sadly at his pet snake until Mary persuaded him to come with her on a supply run to the store. Days like this she longs for the peace of mind she finds at the cabin, missing Bobby’s occasional presence and his gruff, undemanding silence.

“I made waffles,” she says, while Dean digs in the fridge for a beer. “By which I mean I bought a pack of waffles and managed to heat them up without burning any. You want some?”

“Sure,” he says, pulling out a chair. “Why not?”

There’s a long, livid cut on Dean’s hand, right across the meat of his thumb. It’s scabbed over and held together by badly-applied steri-strips. “I thought you said taking down the nest was a cake walk?”

Dean glances offhandedly at the cut, as thought he’d forgotten it was there. “Got stupid with a box cutter, fixing up the trim on Baby. You hear from Riley about the shapeshifters in Westland?”

“Bobby took care of it on his way to Grand Rapids.”

Dean grunts, turning his bottle in the circle of condensation it leaves on the tabletop.

She eyes him over the rim of her coffee cup. “Sam told you about Bobby?” 

“He might have given me a heads up.”

“And you’re ok with it?”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“Dean, we just got your Dad back. I’d understand if you had… mixed feelings about my relationship with someone else.”

“Well, I ain’t gonna start calling Bobby ‘dad’ anytime soon,” Dean says, pulling a face. “And Sam didn’t say it was a ‘relationship’.”

“Enough with the air quotes,” Mary says. She drains the last of her coffee. “I’m not sure what it is… I think your dad coming back pretty much put an end to it, whatever it was.”

“Look, ain’t none of my business -“

“No, but I didn’t mean for you to find out from Sam.”

“Okay, well then, I appreciate you telling me now."

They settle into silence for while, Dean chasing waffle crumbs around his plate.

“Guess we didn’t really get time to talk, when you came up to the cabin,” she says, watching him rub his eyes tiredly.

“Sure we did."

“Dean, you were hellbent on making it your long goodbye, not that you deigned to clue me in, and then you left with the box."

He winces, putting down his fork. “Guess I should’ve given you a heads up, too, huh?”

She extends a hand over the table top and wraps her fingers around his. “Dean. You know how glad I am that you thought better of it.”

“Thank Sam, not me. He decked me and cried on my best shirt, how was I supposed to go through with it after that?”

She watches his eyes track a bead of condensation down the outside of the bottle. They’re so similar, looking at Dean makes her heart lurch. He’s older, now, than she ever was before she died. “Can’t kid a kidder, kiddo,” she says, holding onto his hand. “I wish you’d at least given me the opportunity to try to talk you out of it.”

“Yeah, geez, what a selfish d-bag,” Dean says, blinking at the ceiling. She pretends not to notice. “Mom, can I ask you about Dad?”

She sits up a little straighter. Of the two of them, she’d expected to have to field something along these lines from Sam: he’d called her the day after she drove back up to the cabin and spoken in hushed, guilty tones about how glad he was to have memories of them all together as a family, the way Dean did. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

Dean shifts in his seat, glaring at the bottle again. “Do you still love him?"

She smiles without thinking about it. “Like breathing in and breathing out. It doesn’t stop just ‘cause he’s gone.”

“Even though… Bobby, and all?”

The memory of Ketch hangs between them awkwardly for a long moment, before she can think how to reply. “Dean. Your Dad’s the first man I ever loved, aside from my father, and he’s likely to be the last, except for you and your brother. Is that what’s been bothering you?"

Dean’s cheeks are pink and he’s staring at the label on his beer like it’s caused him personal offence. “Yeah, I guess. Just… having us all here. It got me thinkin’ about things. Before everything went to Hell. When I was a kid, before Sammy… I got to thinking about what I remember.”

“You were so little, Dean. Whatever it is - “

“No, no, it’s cool. It’s good stuff. I remember the pie, no crusts on my PB&J.”

Mary thinks back to that little kitchen in the house in Lawrence. Dean’s chair at the kitchen table, chubby hands curled around his knife and fork, and the way she couldn’t even reheat a store-bought pie without burning it. She strived so hard for that white picket fence and found it always slipping just out of her grasp. 

“Look, I know everything wasn’t - I know it wasn’t all sunbeams and roses. I just - “ he looks up at her, eyes bleak. "Mom, was Dad a good person?"

Months ago, the last time Sam came up to visit on his own, she'd asked him about college and watched his face soften as he talked about passing the LSAT, about Jess and their apartment in Palo Alto. She's listened to the way Sam and Dean talk about this dimension’s Bobby and tried to reckon with his having been more of a father to either of them than John ever was. And it hurts; it hurts to think about him that way, with her memories of Heaven still so close to the surface, for all that she’s tried her best to forget them.

She remembers Dean telling her he hated her, with tears in his eyes beside Sam’s crib: _I had to be a father and I had to be a mother to keep him safe._

“Don’t ask me to answer that, Dean. It’s not fair.”

“I freakin’ worshipped him,” Dean says. “And when he came back, all zen and at peace, I looked at him, saying all that stuff to Sammy about being proud of him, and I thought ‘you got nothing to be proud of; none of it was down to you’.”

“Dean,” she says quietly.

“No, I know. I know. If I want someone to blame, I guess it comes down to Chuck. But I - I know I get things wrong. Sometimes I see myself turning into Dad, and I always thought that was nothing to be ashamed of. How come having him back was the one thing that goddamn pearl knew I wanted, and when he shows up he’s so different I can’t even tell if he’s really Dad or not. I can’t remember seeing him so freakin’ happy."

“He loved you,” she says. “He loved you both so much.”

Dean laughs, staring down at his hands. “I guess he coulda showed it better. Jesus, all Sammy wanted to do was get away, just like you wanted, and look at where he’s ended up. Things were still so bad between them, by the time Dad died...”

“You shouldn’t have had to live with your Dad’s problems the way you did.”

Dean snorts. “I tried so freakin’ hard to be whatever it was he wanted, I kept his goddamn secrets, and he comes back all full of peace and love, while we’re still down here, slogging through demons and angels and the goddamn apocalypse.”

“You think that’s how Sam sees it? You think he’s unhappy?”

“He’s lost everyone - everyone he cared about. How in the hell am I supposed to fix that?”

“Honey, not everything’s on you. He’s grieving; you’ve got to let him work through it.”

“It is on me. He’s still here because of me."

“If Sam wanted a normal life, he wouldn’t be here, Dean. You’ve got to give people more credit than thinking they’d stick around just because they have to.”

Dean sucks in an unsteady breath. “We need a night off,” he says. “Hell, we need a month off, but we’re not gonna get it. Sammy needs someone to force him to take some time away from the work; God knows I’ve tried, but the kid’s got a stubborn streak a mile wide.”

“I wonder where he could have learned that,” Mary says mildly, smiling at him. “We haven’t talked about how you’re holding up."

“I’m just peachy.”

“Dean -“

“Mom. You know me and Sammy: he’s a regular bleeding heart; I just get freakin’ angry.”

She watches him twist the skin around his knuckles between the fingers of his left hand. “How’s that working out for you?”

He glances at her, lost. If there’s anything that makes her want to high-tail it back to the cabin, it’s the evidence laid out before her of how broken her boys have become, because she doesn’t have the first damn clue how to fix it, either.

“Like I said,” Dean says. “Peachy.”

“Dean." 

“No one said anything about not being happy, alright,” Dean snaps, snatching up the bottle again.

“No,” Mary agrees.

He stares the bottle for a while. “How am I supposed to stop just waiting for everything to blow up in our faces? This, right now, you and me and Sam, and Jack and Cas…”

“Dean,” she says, putting a hand on his arm. “Sweetheart. When you work it out, you let me know.”

Dean looks away, fingers fiddling with the curling edge of the beer label. There’s tension running through him like he’s connected to the mains and Mary knows that feeling, the sensation of being too open, too exposed, a piece of wire stretched too thin. It’s a six-hour drive and she needs to get going, if she’s going to make it back to Minnesota by morning. Sam reminded her about the spare room again, when she arrived. She knows if she asked, Dean would tell her he wants her to stay.

“Remember when your dad used to try and get us to play monopoly?” 

He looks up at her, frowning. “That old set with half the money missing and no get out of jail cards?”

“You used to sit on my lap and I had to help you count the money. We used to gang up on your dad and he always used to pretend he was bankrupt just to let you win.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “I liked the little dog."

“There’s a stack of old board games at the cabin. I could ask Donna if she doesn’t mind me bringing them down here. I’ll bet Jack’s never played ‘Hungry Hungry Hippos’.”

Dean snorts. “You think Cas has?”

“Maybe we all need that night off,” she says. “Could get pizza. I could stay for a few days.”

“Game night,” Dean says, sounding like it isn’t the worst idea he’s ever heard. “Guess it couldn’t make things any crappier.”

“There’s the old Winchester spirit,” she says, smiling. “Dean. Your Dad and me - we didn’t always do the right thing, make the right choices. But if you need reminding of why you’re a good man, that’s one thing I can do. You come to me, and I’ll remind you, whenever you need, until some of it starts sinking in.”

He ducks his head and she could almost cry with how similar they are. Can’t bear to take a compliment, and always hoping to be out the door before anyone happens to notice. In the end, he meets her eye and offers her a small, awkward smile. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Anytime,” she says before she leaves, finding that, for once, it’s exactly what she means.


	3. Chapter 3

**Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent-- the Lord detests them both.**  
_Proverbs 17: 15_

Sam’s been finding excuses to avoid mealtimes; Dean’s frankly insulted that he thinks he’s being subtle about it.

He's spent a solid fortnight, in between cases, trying to entice Sam into the kitchen with burgers and enchiladas, up to his elbows in ground beef and chipotles, wishing life were a Tom and Jerry cartoon and Sam could be dragged to the dinner table by the smell of his favourite food wafting through the vents. Before it all went to shit, they’d been eating at the kitchen table most nights; Jack because he likes the taste of Dean’s Miles Davis chili, so long as he's allowed to cover it in parmesan cheese, Sam because Dean caved to pressure and started cooking at least one green vegetable with every meal, and Cas because he forgets eating is supposed to be beneath him and likes to sit with his elbows on the table, shirt sleeves rolled up, smiling at their conversation and working his way through the oyster crackers.

“You want one spoon or two?”

Jack considers for a moment, head on one side and so like the Cas of old that Dean could believe they’re blood. “Two.”

Dean loads mac and cheese into a bowl and brings it over. “You forget please and thank you at Donatello’s?”

“Thank you, Dean.”

It’s a close-run thing, but Dean stops himself from ruffling Jack’s hair. He fills his own bowl and sits down to eat. There are two empty spaces at the table today: Cas is off on an errand and Dean is honoring their agreement not to bug him for details, in a display of trust that goes against every one of his instincts; Sam’s been hiding in the library most of the day, and seems determined to subsist on shitty diner food while they’re on the road, and thin air when they’re home.

“Dig in."

“I like mac and cheese best when you make it,” Jack says, prodding the bowl’s contents and lifting up a strand of molten mozzarella - mozzarella Dean only puts in because Sam likes it; he’s not a heathen, it’s not his fault Sam developed perverse, highfalutin tastes in California. “It… stretches.”

“Blame Sam,” Dean mutters, shovelling a forkful into his mouth. He regrets it when he has to chase it down with beer to soothe the burn left by sauce that’s like hot lava on the back of his throat. 

“Blame me for what?”

Sam’s slouched in the doorway like a scarecrow without a stand. He’s half-asleep on his feet and there’s the imprint of the keys of his laptop keyboard embedded in his left cheek. 

“Dean says it’s your fault the mac and cheese is stretchy,” Jack says around a mouthful of pasta.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Dean tells him, ignoring his own advice.

“Dude,” says Sam, in the tone he saves for when Dean’s done something he finds particularly disgusting. He starts towards the table to put down the laptop, and Dean would have missed the way he freezes, all the color draining from his face, if he hadn’t been watching. 

“Do as I say, not as I do,” he says, shrugging. “You okay?”

Sam flinches as though a spirit’s walked straight through him and tucks the laptop back under his arm. “Yeah, fine. I - uh - I just remembered, I promised to give Donna a call about the lore on tzitzimimeh.”

“Gesundheit."

“Dude, every time? Seriously, I’m not hungry, you guys go ahead. I’ll grab something later."

“Like hell, Sammy -"

“I’m fine, Dean. I’ll let you know if Donna needs our help,” Sam says. He grimaces and flees, high-tailing it in the direction of the library.

Dean watches him go, jabbing his fork into the bowl unnecessarily hard and sending an ooze of sauce slopping onto the tabletop.

Across from him, Jack has put down his fork and is glaring into his pasta. “Dean,” he says. “Is something the matter with Sam?”

“He’s grieving, man. He just needs some time.”

Jack is silent for a long moment, as though chewing this over. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to cast Michael out sooner, before he was able to hurt so many people.”

“We talked about this,” Dean says. “Got nothing to be sorry for.”

“If I’d been stronger, I could have forced him out as soon as you got back. Maybe then Sam would want to be in the same room as me, again.”

“No,” Dean says, putting down his own fork more forcefully than he intended. “You can cut that crap right now. You saved our freakin’ lives, Jack. It’s not you, or me, that’s eating him. It just is what it is; it hurts, but he’ll come through."

Jack is silent; it’s a mutinous, disbelieving sort of silence Dean recognises all too well from days in the car after an argument between Sam and Dad, both of them simmering and on a hair-trigger, and Dean playing piggy-in-the-middle, turning up the music so he could pretend that was the reason no one was speaking to one another. 

Sitting back in his chair, he casts a critical eye over the kitchen, wondering what in the hell could have Sam so freaked out he’s skipping meals and making up crap about cases with Donna, just to avoid setting foot in the place. Nothing’s out of place; for all that Dean’s been doing his level best to cook his way out of trouble, he’s no slouch at clearing up after himself. The place is spotless, if he does say so himself. 

It hits him like a slug in the guts, when he sees them: the row of empty coffee mugs lined up on the kitchen counter by the coffee machine. He hadn’t thought to move them, because they weren’t in his way; in any case, they were furniture, by now, just another of the changes he’d accepted when he came back to the bunker and found Sam rocking the Charlie Manson facial hair and letting himself be referred to as Chief. 

“Goddamn it, Sammy,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. 

Jack pushes back his chair, frowning. “Dean, I’m going to my room.”

“Yeah, you do that, kid,” Dean says, glaring at the row of mugs. How in the hell could he have been so stupid? He’s already packed the hunters’ belongings into boxes so they could be burned with the bodies. How could he miss something so freaking obvious? Maggie’s mug’s the size of a soup bowl, for Christ’s sake, with her name written on the side in bright green letters.

It’d been a gift from one of the other hunters, her first birthday topside. She’d sipped coffee out of it when she was on late-night phone duty, curled in an armchair in the library while the others were out in the field. She used to grin shyly at Dean when he stumbled in and offered to make it Irish for her, holding it out for a slug of whatever Dean was drinking. She never once asked what Dean was doing wandering around in the middle of the night, just sat in companionable silence listening to the records Dean put on the ancient turntable. 

She’d slipped him a bottle of lavender oil, a couple months back, and said with a kind smile that she put it on her pillow to help her sleep when the nightmares got bad. She’d promised she wouldn’t say a word to anyone, and that she knew some great white noise apps, if the lavender didn’t do the job. Dean had been so sleep-deprived he’d folded under her kindness like a shitty hand in poker and had to wipe his treacherous eyes with the back of his hand while he thanked her.

The sound of Maggie’s mug shattering against the opposite wall is really fucking satisfying. Dean watches it disintegrate and listens to the sound of his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. There are shards of pottery all over the floor, and a chip in the tiles where the mug struck.

There’s no fucking point standing there looking at it; the rage has already receded and been replaced by weary shame that he can’t even keep his cool here, in the kitchen, where he usually finds a modicum of calm. The mess needs to be cleared up, and then every single one of those goddamn mugs needs to be thrown in a box and hidden away at the back of the deepest, darkest storage closet Dean can find. 

He gets down on his hands and knees to pick up the largest pieces of the shattered mug, scooping them up to carry them to the trash, then curses when the wicked end of the largest piece - bright purple, with the letter ‘M’ picked out in lime-green paint - slices straight into the meat of the base of his thumb. He dumps the lot into the trash and inspects the wound: the length of a matchstick, fairly deep, blood already welling up and pooling in his palm. 

“Nice going, asshole,” he mutters, sticking his hand under the faucet. Blood swirls into the drain; he glares at it, feeling dumb and useless for throwing a tantrum and ending up wounded. He grabs a tea towel and wraps it between his thumb and forefinger; it’ll do until he can grab the medical kit. He’ll stick it together with steri-strips and pretend it’s the result of clumsiness while fixing Baby, lest Cas spot it and get that funny look in his eye that means he's about to demand they talk about Dean’s feelings.

There are empty packing boxes in the largest supply closet, left over from the last bulk salt run. He’ll pack the mugs away, throw in the fridge magnets and postcards that are still stuck to the fridge door, the photo Maggie printed of Matt and Alison when they’d successfully concluded a hunt and sent everyone a selfie with their arms around each other and big thumbs up raised for the camera. He’ll pretend like the hunters never occupied the bunker’s spare bedrooms, like the bustle of so many bodies occupying the space never made the bunker feel like it was finally fulfilling its potential, and he’ll expect Sam to do the same; it’s shitty, but it’s the only way they’ve learned to go forward.

He’s on his way out the door when he realises Jack left his bowl at the table when he disappeared off to his room. He’s barely eaten, his fork abandoned next to it, cheese sauce coagulating on a pile of cold pasta.

“For fuck’s sake, Jack,” he says, shoving the bowl into the fridge in case Jack or Sam decides to creep back later and scrounge for leftovers, if neither of them can stand Dean’s company long enough to sit through dinner. He sighs, glancing towards the ceiling out of habit. "Cas, where the hell are you? You need to come and be a people person for both of us, man, because I am dying on my ass, here.”

  


* * *

  
It’s a long week before Cas is back, looking worn-down and frustrated. He trudges into the kitchen while Dean’s fixing himself a cup of coffee, sagging against the countertop in a gesture so human it reminds Dean painfully of Idaho.

“Everything alright, man?”

“Fine,” Cas says, loosening the knot in his tie with one hand. “My trip to Moldova was a bust. The codex had long since been broken up and lost and the witch who possessed the section still remaining in Chișinău deployed potent magic to keep me from finding it. There were manticores.”

“Manticores?”

“The body of a lion and the tail of a scorpion,” Cas elaborates, wearily. "The tail shoots poisoned darts."

“Ouch. You want coffee?”

Cas appears to consider it. When Dean looks at him properly, he realises Cas is crumpled and dusty; he’s been looking tired a lot, recently. It shouldn’t be so freaking endearing, and yet, here they are, standing awkwardly in the kitchen while Dean makes heart-eyes at his best friend. “No,” Cas says, smiling at him nonetheless. “Thank you.”

Dean shrugs and sits down before he can embarrass himself further.

“I spoke with Mary,” Cas says. “She mentioned ‘game night’. I assume from the array of boxes, she’s brought quite the range of boardgames back from the cabin.”

“I told her not to bother with Twister."

Cas fixes him with one of the deadpan stares Dean chooses to interpret as evidence that Cas finds him hilarious. “I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your prayer, Dean,” he says, frowning, ruining the effect.

“Huh?”

“Your prayer. Last week, you sought my presence. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to return, I was embroiled in negotiations with a librarian in Santa Barbara for the loan of a copy of another section of the codex. I gathered from your tone it wasn’t a genuine call for assistance.”

“Nah, man. Don’t sweat it; it’s just been like living with teenagers, round here,” Dean says with a shrug. “Everyone’s moody, nobody’s talking; and, believe me, I’m hip to the irony of me being the one complaining about it. I feel like I need to drive to Jody’s and shake her by the hand for surviving Alex and Claire.”

“You’re all exhausted. Has Sam rested, since you returned from Iowa?”

“Define ‘rested’. He faceplants in his keyboard when he’s too wiped to research, that count?”

Cas sighs, head bowed. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here. It’s been a trying couple of days; would you mind if I moved the books into the bunker for safe-keeping?”

“Sure, man, do what you gotta do.”

Cas nods gratefully. On his way out of the room, he lays a hand on Dean’s shoulder, heavy and warm through flannel, his thumb softly skimming Dean’s skin. It lingers for longer than necessitated by a gesture of comradely support; Dean leans into it more than is necessary, too; neither of them mentions it. Cas departs to retrieve his loot from the trunk of the car.

  


* * *

  
By the time evening rolls round, Dean feels like he’s been crawling the walls for hours. Sam’s agreed, grudgingly, under pain of a stern talking to from Mom, to abandon the books for a night; Mom’s taking Jack to pick up pizza. Dean’s been left stewing in his own juices, flicking listlessly through the dog-eared sci-fi paperbacks he lifted from the personal effects of a long-dead Man of Letters when they first moved in.

He can’t shake the look on his mom’s face when she’d called him on the issue of his happiness, and now he’s in a funk of miserable introspection and there’s no one around to help take his mind off it. He just wants what he’s always wanted. He pretended like he could walk straight into it, once, a ready-made family, and that selfishness had nearly cost Lisa and Ben everything. Over the years he and Sam have edged close to building something real, skirted round it and had it blow up in their faces more times than Baby’s had oil changes. A field full of fireworks on the 4th of July. Jo and Ellen, Ash, Bobby, Charlie, Kevin. All the people they’ve loved and lost. Donna and Jody, the kids - _their_ kids somehow, like the Winchesters bought a time-share in a troop of smart-ass, headstrong teenagers and somehow they didn’t fuck it up. Family, whatever the fuck it means. And now, Dean’s watching it disintegrate in front of him again as Sam falls to pieces and Jack spends more and more time alone in his room. He hopes to God - to Chuck - to somebody that Mary’s right about the healing power of boardgames and junk food, because Dean’s just about exhausted his limited set of ideas about how to put things right.

There’s a knock at his bedroom door and Dean grunts at whoever it is to enter. When he looks up, it’s clear that Cas has, at some point recently, taken a shower. It’s so unlikely that Dean can’t stop himself from staring. Cas' hair’s curling and damp at the back, leaving a wet patch on his collar.

“Been gettin’ dirty in the Balkans?”

Cas makes a face of pronounced displeasure, like a cat that’s stepped in a puddle. “Geographically, Moldova is considered to be a part of Eastern Europe. And it must have been illusory, but I could still smell smoke.”

That shuts down Dean’s libido with a snap. Over the last two weeks he’s stood under the shower with the water pressure cranked up as high as he can get it and tried to scrub the smell of all those pyres on that godforsaken abandoned lot out of his pores. He still finds himself catching phantom whiffs of it on his jacket, on Baby’s upholstery, and it makes him want to plant a fist in the wall every single time. “Couldn’t you just -“ he gestures ‘wax-on, wax-off’.

“I learned some time ago that a shower needn’t be purely for hygienic purposes, Dean,” Cas replies. Judging by the way he raises an eyebrow in Dean’s direction, he intended it as a joke. “I meant that I find it pleasant. Cathartic.”

Dean shrugs, having spent the best years of his life pretending to be immune to Cas’ sudden, weird bursts of innuendo.

“Hey,” he says, low and careful, when they’re in the hallway on the way to the map room. “You got time to talk, later?”

Cas eyes him seriously for a moment. “Before or after Jack polishes the floor with you in a game of Buckaroo?”

“Oh, fuck you, you’re just doing it to be cute.”

Dean’s been pretending for years about what he remembers and what he’s forgotten, what he feels and what he doesn’t. Most of the time he’s gotten away with it because they’ve been occupied with more pressing concerns, like preventing the end of the goddamn world. All told, it's been a decade of edging closer and falling apart, of lying easier than breathing, and of beating the living crap out of one another, then spending the next couple of months edging ‘round one another's sore spots and pretending they’re too old for apologies. There hasn’t been a lot of time for indulging in navel-gazing.

It’s nearly two years since Cas set foot through the rift and Dean suffered a minor revelation about the nature of his need for Cas to never not be around. Somewhere between washing the sand off Cas’ limp, lifeless body and binding him in his bed-sheet shroud, this new understanding had crowded in and made itself at home in his chest, in the tight, furious way grief always gets a hold of him; making him want to smash shit up and punch holes in walls until he bleeds. Processing it has taken up a lot of internal time and space, since then, and there hasn’t been time for freaking out about it. The thing is… the thing is, he’s so tired of watching Castiel leave, and at this point he's just got so used to expecting it. He spends half the time wondering what it’ll take for Cas to finally decide he’s done with them, what Heaven will promise that Cas can’t or won’t refuse, and the rest of the time pretending that he doesn’t care. It makes him want to push and push until Cas gets so angry he stalks away with his trench coat snapping in the wind, the bunker door slamming shut behind him as he walks out of Dean’s life for good.

Whether Cas has figured any of this out, and how high it figures on his list of priorities remains an unknown quantity, and it’s the kind of ambiguity that makes Dean antsy. Just because they need each other, it doesn’t mean there’ll be anything left to salvage the next time one of them fucks things up. It’d be impossible to itemise every time they’ve hurt one another over the years in a thousand, incremental, paper-cut ways. Now Cas is standing a foot away with a soft, pleased smile on his face and something within Dean says: _please_. It’s the kind of feeling that makes him want to track down a nest of vamps just to have something in front of him that he’s allowed to behead.

He’s about to stalk off to the garage to find something to occupy himself until Mary and Jack return with the pizza, but Cas stops him with a hand on his sleeve. “Dean, I hope you know that I always have time, for you. In any case, I think we need to talk about Jack.”

“Thought you said he was doin’ ok, for now?”

Cas sighs. “Are any of us doing ok, at the moment, Dean?”

“Well, whatever it is, it can wait til after game night. You’re staying, right?”

Cas sighs again. For a moment he looks torn, and Dean prepares himself, as always, not to show his disappointment. “I’ll be here. I have an errand to run, first. Someone I need to meet.”

“Anyone we know?”

“Dean.”

“Alright, alright, do what you gotta do. You want pizza?”

“Will it have pineapple on it?”

“Not if Jack values the right to call himself a Winchester.”

“Then yes, I will have pizza. And I look forward to learning why the hippos are so very hungry.”

He smiles, clearly pleased with himself; Dean lets the knowledge that he wants to kiss him settle under his skin, warm and familiar, the way it always does. It’s a low, comfortable burn somewhere in the region of his gut; desire, banked, able to smoulder like this until he’s forced to put it out once and for all. It’ll probably make the inevitable extinguishing harder, it’s probably going to mean it hurts more, but his mom wasn’t wrong when she called him a stubborn son of a bitch.

When they walk into the war room, there’s a pile of beaten-up cardboard boxes stacked at one end of the long table. This is exactly what they all need: for one night, all that matters is family. Someone needs to unpack Mouse Trap and check all the pieces are present and correct, and Dean’s wanted to get his hands on those tiny hunks of plastic cheese since he saw the ad on TV one Christmas and knew Dad would never buy it for them, no matter how hard Sammy begged.

“Hey, see ya later,” he calls over his shoulder as he sets about extracting the game from its box.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Want to be like Dean and make Miles Davis’ chili recipe? [ Here’s the link.](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/58419/miles-davis-chili-recipe) Miles Davis served chili with parmesan and crackers, which is a new one on me - but if the Prince of Darkness says it’s good, it's good


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: alcohol dependency.

**A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.**  
_Proverbs 17:17_

**Then:**

Sam would never know exactly how much had gone on between Dad and Pastor Jim. The one time he’d brought it up, he was eight and pissed at Dad for leaving and he’d sought refuge in bitching about the situation to Dean while kicking the table leg in the motel room until his toes hurt. Dean was used to it, took it in his stride while he doled out fried chicken onto paper plates, let the torrent of Sam’s angry words wash over him without comment – until Sam made the mistake of stepping over an invisible line he hadn’t even realised existed and made a bitter joke about Dad just going and fucking Pastor Jim if that was where he wanted to spend all his time, anyway. It was a word he hadn’t even really understood, but he’d heard other hunters using it and he liked the angry sound it made in his mouth. Dean put the take-out bag down on the table and stared at him, rage and something that looked a lot like fear written loud in his expression. 

“Don’t you ever go shooting your mouth off about that again, d’you hear me?" 

Sam stared back, bewildered, shame pooling in the pit of his stomach. He had this feeling like he’d said something really stupid and hurtful without meaning to. What sort of terrible person was he, that could he say something so horrible about Dad that Dean would look at him that way, like it was unforgivable, something that made Dean so afraid? He nodded dumbly and Dean carried on setting out their dinner. 

“Why’d you get so angry when I said that about Dad and Pastor Jim?” he asked quietly, much later, when they were sitting on the bed watching TV. 

Dean didn’t look at him, just frowned at the screen as though he suddenly had to concentrate real hard to focus on the plot of Sunset Beach. 

“Because it’s none of our goddamned business,” he replied firmly, and that was that. Sam never asked again. 

  


  
**Now:**

It’s not often that Sam intervenes in Dean’s self-destructive behaviours. It's made him queasy to nag Dean for drinking too much, sleeping too little, ever since Ruby. He likes to think he’s learned humility, since then. He’s learned, too, for his own self-preservation, not to try to be his brother’s keeper.

The problem is that it’s been two weeks since they got back from Black Forest. Two weeks since Lilith, and Chuck’s gun molten on the tarmac outside the motel, and Dean’s still living like he’s twenty-five and able to come up from a nightly bender on the strength of a winning smile and a can-do attitude. He’s trying to be cool about it, pretending like it isn’t a big deal, doing his utmost to put the ‘functional’ in functional alcoholic. It’s making Sam’s fingers curl into fists watching him trudge into the kitchen, help himself to a handful of leftover chilli cheese fries from the fridge, and wander straight over to the whiskey, like it’s not a cause for concern. _Nothing to see here; just Dean Winchester drinking his feelings about the end of the world._

“Dude, you’ve been conscious less than five hours,” he says, because it’s barely evening and Dean’s decided to skip his usual six-o’clock beer and head straight to three fingers of Jim Beam, knocked back with a grimace and an expansive burp.

“And?”

“ _And_ , do you think maybe you should lay off the sauce?”

Dean places the tumbler back on the counter with a crack. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and grins, hard-eyed. “Do you think maybe you should get off my ass?"

  


  
**Then:**

“I’m sorry, John,” Jim said quietly, holding out a glass. 

John nodded and took it, downing the contents in one go and grimacing as liquor hit the back of his throat. 

“Just one more wild goose chase to add to the list. Dragged the boys halfway across the goddamned country, and nothing to show for it.” 

Jim knew better than to try his church-talk with John, didn’t bother to try to console him or offer the facile promise of prayers on his behalf, just rested a hand on the other man’s shoulder. If John turned his head to brush against Jim’s sleeve and sighed, they neither of them mentioned it. 

They drank some more and sat in subdued silence on the couch, and then Jim announced he might think about taking himself off to bed. John followed, sometime later. 

Jim knew it for what it was: something that was only ever going to happen when John and the boys happened to be heading through Minnesota. An accidental, almost careless thing. The three of them were on their mission, forever going East-West and then turning round and doing it over again the other way around. He understood it, and if he thought it wasn’t healthy for the boys to be cooped up in the back of the car for days on end and never having anywhere they could call home more than a couple weeks at a time, it wasn’t his place to say. He knew what John had gone through in the months after Mary died, remembered the misery he saw in John’s eyes when they first met up to share information and whiskey at Bill Harvelle’s place. Some days he didn’t know what worried him the most – the dead-eyed look John got when he sat on his own too long and stared at the walls like he wanted them to swallow him up, or the trembling, desperate way John sought his only means of surrendering his self-control. 

Jim took it all in, gave it back ten-fold, let John get whatever he needed. It might not have been strictly what the Lord prescribed in the scriptures, but it was charity of a sort. Besides which, Jim was a pastor, not a saint. He had seen enough of the world to know that a man had to have a vice, and in a world full of vampires and succubi and all other kinds of evil things, he knew he could do a lot worse. 

Recently, though, the past two times the Winchesters had passed through Blue Earth, John had let the boys go off into the fields round the back of the church – telling Dean, “Take care of your brother,” as though that wasn’t the only thing the boy lived for in any case – and he’d sat at Jim’s kitchen table, and talked. They’d talked. About the usual things: demons, and the hunt, and Daniel Elkins and the interminable search for that goddamned mythical gun. But about normal stuff too, or as normal as things got with the Winchesters, such as how Dean had been in trouble again at school for knocking the younger kids around when they picked on Sammy, and how clever Sam was, how he’d be a grade-A genius one day, that kid. Sometimes they just talked about shit, like men do, and they laughed and kicked back and had a damned good time. 

Once, the boys came running back to the house, wondering what the hell was going on because they’d heard raised voices and – although Dean didn’t ever say it – probably because they thought their daddy was about to pick a fight with his one remaining friend. They’d come bursting into the kitchen ready to jump in and pull the two men apart, to find John wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, laughing so hard he was fit to burst, and they’d stood there, bewildered, looking like they didn’t have the first clue what to do. 

  


  
**Now:**

Usually, Sam would let it go. Usually, Sam would take into account the two decades Dean’s been using alcohol as a crutch and leave him to it. It’s too late now to blame him for behaviours he learned at the knee of the person who should have been setting him a better example.

The problem is that Sam recognises this pattern for what it is: Dean eating bacon cheeseburgers for breakfast because he’s already got one foot on the highway to Hell; Dean convinced they’re going to lose before they’ve even really begun, in spite of everything they’ve said about standing together and finding a way.

He’s spent two weeks, so far, watching Dean spiral the drain. It’s been two weeks of earnest discussions about where they go from here, and Sam’s been feeling like they’re more in sync than they have been for a long time, because there’s nothing like an apocalypse to unite the Winchesters in purpose. But the truth is, the bunker's still too quiet: Cas won’t return any of Sam’s calls, and he doesn’t want to find out how long Dean can keep it up before he keels over from alcohol poisoning or throws himself into a fight he knows he can’t win. Beneath it all, the ache in Sam's shoulder is a constant, gnawing thrum of discomfort. He’s exhausted; it feels like he and Dean are holding themselves together with the ends of a fraying rope and it's about to snap.

“Are you kidding me?”

He’s on Dean’s heels as he stalks off in the direction of the war room, and he’s itching for a fight, if that’s the only way he’s getting a reaction. It’s always been like this, with them: circling round one another even when all they really need is space. "On top of everything else you’re gonna stop speaking to me, now, too?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean says, slumping into an armchair and putting his feet up on the reading table, legs crossed at the ankle.

“C'mon, Dean. You know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s okay to admit that you’re missing Cas; it's okay to admit that you're not okay with any of this.”

“Who’s missing anybody? Maybe I’m just sick of having my chain yanked by that lazy, beardy hack. Maybe I’m trying to live a little before Chuck pulls the plug on existence.”

Sam takes in the fact that Dean looks as rough as he ever has: unshaven and hungover with raw, bloodshot eyes. “This is living?”

Dean leans back in his chair, that same empty grin plastered across his face. “Like a king, Sammy."

Sam sighs, lowering himself into the chair on the other side of the table. “He won’t answer any of my calls."

Dean shrugs. “He's made his choice."

“Dean. I know you don’t wanna talk about it, but this - what you’re doing right now? - it’s so far from healthy. We don’t have to be on our own in this.”

“What happened to ‘we’re the guys who break the rules’?” Dean demands, glaring at him.

“Nothing, but you know who's broken more rules than either of us?”

Sometimes, Sam chokes on the sadness that rolls through him when he thinks about the fact that he and Dean are, yet again, going toe-to-toe with the end of the universe. Dean’s still checked out before the fight's even begun, despite all of Sam’s pep talks, and he’s driven Cas away, and Eileen’s still finding her feet with what it means to be back, and that leaves Sam, carrying the weight of all of it. “If we go out, I don’t want to go out like this,” he says, willing Dean to understand.

“Well, this is how it was always gonna be!” Dean’s planted his palms on the table, and the slap resounds between them, too loud. "It ends bloody or sad, remember? Guess we got sad: the end. I’m on board, alright? But there ain’t gonna be a freakin’ victory parade waiting for us, however this plays out."

Sam holds his hands up in defeat. “Alright, I get it. But are you seriously saying you wanna do this without Cas?"

Dean is quiet for so long, Sam thinks he’s pushed too hard and Dean will walk away and spend the next week giving him the silent treatment. Instead, he says, low and resigned: “It’s not up to me. It’s not about what I want, never has been."

“What are you talking about?”

Dean shrugs. “Made my peace with it a long time ago, Sammy: there’s no happy ending for me, here. So, it’s all down to Chuck, in the end - that’s a freakin’ delight. The rest of it? Can’t say I’m surprised how things have turned out.”

It’s years, now, since Sam's heard this species of grim resignation in Dean’s voice when he speaks about the future. It’s the sound of a week tracking Dean across the Midwest to stop him before he could do anything as stupid as saying yes to Zachariah; it’s watching Dean wrap his fist around the hilt of the First Blade like it was all he was born to do. “Dean.”

“Just... leave it, huh?” Dean swings his feet off the table and he looks pale, as though he’s on the verge of needing to puke. "We got work to do. I’ll go sober up and we can start taking a look at the cases Jody's flagged up.”

“Dean, wait. Are you saying you still think you’re being _punished_ for something?“

“Oh, c’mon, Sam!”

“ _You_ come on!” Sam’s suddenly so fucking angry, because the pair of them have danced this waltz of self-recrimination too often, now, for it still to lay heavy between them like this. "I thought we were done with this self-flagellation bullshit! Even if you were right, you don't have a goddamn monopoly on having done things you're ashamed of.”

Dean is mulishly silent. “Well,” he says, eventually, "I ain’t exactly the only one suffering, here.”

Sam frowns, because it’s a low blow, but he’s not exactly wrong: if Dean’s life’s been shitty lately, Sam can hardly claim his has been much better. “Dude.”

“Look, just... it’s nothing to do with you, alright? It’s on me. We know it’s all bullshit, anyway - it’s all Chuck, and there’s no punishment, no reward. But I've spent years making my peace with the way this ends. You think good people like Kevin and Charlie go out the way they do, and I get to go out doing the high kicks and singing ‘My Way'? Way I see it, either Hell’s about to claim me, or Chuck’s gonna snap his fingers and put me back there himself: asshole loves a tragedy.”

Years ago, that awful winter after Kevin and Gadreel, when things had been stiff and awkward between them, and Dean had finally goaded Sam into saying what he really thought about Dean’s inability to handle the idea of him not being around, it had mostly been this that had infuriated him: Dean’s absolute insistence that bringing Sam back from the brink of death time after time was non-negotiable, while holding his own life in such disregard that he’d talk about swan-diving back into Hell like it wasn't even a big deal. The hypocrisy, the fact that Dean’s too pig-headed to acknowledge it, has always been enough to make his blood boil.

“Are you serious?"

“We’ve had some good times, man. Don’t go crying over things we can’t change.”

"So, what about Cas?”

Dean’s eyes are on the wall over Sam’s left shoulder, carefully blank, as though Sam hasn’t been walking on eggshells for a fortnight avoiding exactly this argument. “What about him?”

“Does he get a say in any of this,” Sam demands, too exasperated to care, "while we’re on the subject of what you want?”

“I don’t know,” Dean snaps. “Does he? Have any of us actually had a say in _anything_ , this whole time?”

They’ve been back and forth on the issue of what’s them and what’s Chuck so many times in the past two weeks that Sam’s tired of hearing his own voice making the same, pointless arguments. He’s started running with headphones and music on, when before he’d always had a hunter’s good sense to keep his attention on his surroundings, and it's just so he can get a moment’s peace from wondering, wondering, wondering about choices and guilt and all the things he always thought he was responsible for and wished he wasn’t.

Dean gets to his feet and stalks over to the cabinet where they keep the decent whiskey. He pours himself a measure and offers the same to Sam, but he refuses it with a shake of his head. Dean knocks back a mouthful of the good stuff, Ketch’s Macallan that they keep in a decanter since Bobby took a swig after Mom’s wake and told them they were heathen idjits for treating it like rotgut.

Dean’s tipping the glass back and forth in his hand, avoiding Sam’s eyes. “You remember Marie? Sparky kid with the creepy play?”

“Yeah, of course, why?”

Dean brings a second measure of scotch with him as he sits down again. "You ever think about what they’re all doing, now? Whether Marie ever made it to Broadway?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, smiling. “I looked her up, couple years back. Majoring in Theater Arts at Columbia.”

“Good for her,” Dean says, knocking back the contents of the glass. “Bet Chuck was just creaming his panties over having fans, glad he gave ‘em a decent life. Look, you know what? Forget it. I’ve had too much to drink, you don’t need to listen to this.”

“No, Dean, c’mon. Just spill it, whatever’s eating you."

Dean gives an explosive sigh. “It’s the same bullshit we’ve been talkin’ about for weeks. I don’t like being played. Cas says ‘we’re real’, what does that even mean? Are any of the words comin’ out of my mouth what I want to say, or words that sadistic douchebag scripted for me? I can’t stand the idea that all of it - that the whole thing just -"

“Have you talked to Cas about any of this?”

”I can’t, man. I -“ Dean pushes his thumbs into the corners of his eyes. “It’s not just about him. I got baggage, alright? Big fuckin’ surprise."

“Listen,” Sam says, because no matter how stubborn either of them are, he hates seeing Dean like this, so unsure of his own emotions he’s tying himself in knots. “I’ve tried calling. Whatever else is going on, we’re stronger with Cas in our corner. We need him.”

“Well, you tried - if the dude doesn’t want to listen -"

"I’m not the one he wants to hear from.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Can the touchy-feely crap, alright? Mom, Jack… There’s no comin’ back from this one, Sammy. I’m begging you: leave it."

If there’s anything Sam’s learned, over the years, it’s how to recognise when Dean has ripped a hole in himself big enough for some of the truth to come oozing out, and when he’s done, when he needs Sam to back off and leave him to tuck it all back inside and stitch himself together again.

Sam needs to get out for a run, in any case, if he’s going to be back in time for Eileen getting in from Lake Waconda. He gets to his feet, about to head to his room to change, but he pauses, thinking about putting a hand on Dean’s shoulder, letting him know Sam gets it, that he hasn’t ever expected Dean to articulate what the deal is with him and Cas, and that he never will, not unless Dean's ready.

“We’ve been cheerleaders for free will for... what, a decade, now?” he says, instead, to the back of Dean’s head. “It's years since Cas was some angelic punchbag you could throw all your anger and your grief at and expect none of it to stick. Would you blame him, if he didn't want to come home? We lost Mom, and it _sucks_ , but Jack was his child, Dean. Our child. Maybe he needs time, or maybe he just needs you to talk to him - an apology, some honesty, I have no clue. At least if you made it clear he was welcome here, you'd have given him the choice.”

Dean says nothing, so Sam leaves him there, knuckles white around an empty whiskey glass.

  


  
**Then:**

“You think Dad’s okay?” Sam asked, squinting at Dean through the setting sun that was streaming through the Impala’s dirty windows. 

Dean barely glanced at him, “Why wouldn’t he be?" 

Sam said nothing for a long moment, tapped his fingers against the edge of the seat. Truth was, Dad hadn’t been okay for near-on twenty-three years, and Sam remembered long periods of his childhood spent watching his father’s expression in the rear-view mirror, wondering how anyone got by with all that hurt stored up inside them. It was the closest thing to empathy he’d ever felt for Dad until Jess, and it was that feeling he’d hung on to whenever Dean had had to grab him and take him outside the motel room and tell him to shut the hell up and stop picking fights for the sake of it. 

“There’s no one left, now, ‘cept us." 

This time Dean’s eyes didn’t stray from the road. “Dad’s strong, he’s got through worse.” 

Sam shook his head, rested his elbow on the wound-down window. “Yeah, but. Come on, man – this is Pastor Jim – " 

“Dad’ll be fine,” Dean said, with an air of finality, and that was all there was to it. 

Up ahead, the truck pulled up at the crossroad and they slowed to a halt behind it. It was some goddamned sorry welcome to Salvation, Iowa. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.**  
_Proverbs 17: 28_

It's been a frantic few weeks, between Michael’s imprisonment and Jack’s difficult recovery. Dean has not been sleeping. There are bruises deepening beneath his eyes and his attention drifts often when he thinks no one is looking. Castiel observes him surreptitiously, keeping his concerns to himself, until the morning he finds Dean slumped at the kitchen table and watches him stare at the bare wall on the other side of the room for a full five minutes, the remains of his breakfast cold and congealing on a plate in front of him. In the end, he clears his throat and asks if Dean is feeling unwell.

Dean frowns at him for a moment before throwing back the last of his coffee. He grimaces and gestures at his forehead with an unsteady hand. “Goddamn headache. You got something stronger than aspirin?"

Castiel lays a hand on his shoulder, wicking away the pain, and Dean smiles up at him in relief. It’s an unguarded moment, a simple, grateful exchange, and Castiel tucks the memory of it away inside himself, pleased. The headache, nevertheless, is cause for concern.

He can’t think about Dean’s secrecy over the construction of the Ma’lak box without imagining him trapped in it, and the thought of it fills him with visceral horror. The artefact is housed in one of the spare storage rooms within the bunker; he wishes Sam had never told him which one, because it leads to him avoiding the entire hallway. It’s illogical, because the box carries no trace of inherent evil. It is neutral, merely a receptacle for whatever might be placed inside it, but knowing that Dean intended it to be his prison, for the rest of eternity, makes even knowing it is in the building loathsome. 

Dean appears again, hours later, smelling of engine oil and barbecue spices, when Castiel is running his hand along a shelf in the library, wondering which, if any, of the meagre selection of fiction titles Jack might appreciate. He slides right up beside Castiel and nudges him with his shoulder. “Sam’s staying on at Mom’s a couple of nights. Movie night in the den: you, me and Jack. You in?”

There’s a smile playing around the corners of his eyes, painting the creases there deeper, and Castiel is so relieved to see him back to his usual self, after the recent round of recriminations and tearful apologies between he and Sam, that he agrees without enquiring first about the title of the movie.

“You gettin’ bored?” Dean asks with a raised eyebrow, peering at the shelf behind Castiel’s head. 

Castiel regards the books balefully. “It's for Jack. I know Sam’s been providing him with reading material, but I wanted to find something for him myself. I'm concerned he's getting restless.”

“Well, Sam’s your guy for this kinda stuff…” Dean casts a sceptical eye over the dusty spines. “Wait, I gotta stack of old sci-fi paperbacks in my room. Maybe, uh, steer clear of 'Starship Troopers', but he’s welcome to the rest of them. And, hey, we got the whole set of Oz, plus some that never got published.”

Castiel smiles. “Thank you, Dean.”

“You got it.” Dean flicks him a wave over his shoulder on his way out of the room, adding: “Brisket’s in the oven, dinner at six.”

  


* * *

  


“ _Stairway to Heaven_ ,” Dean announces, that evening, showing him the DVD case. He looks terribly pleased with himself. “Trust me, it’s a classic."

Metatron’s interference has left Castiel with an encyclopaedic knowledge of popular culture, but Dean has said from the beginning that knowing isn’t the same as understanding. Watching the nonsense unfolding on the projector screen before him, Castiel is inclined to agree.

“I fail to understand why this spirit is qualified to act as Squadron Leader Carter’s legal representative,” he says. "He’s a doctor of medicine, not an attorney, and this is an approximation of trial by jury, which is a ridiculous manner of judging the worthiness of a soul to enter Heaven.”

“They're not trying to get him _in_ , genius,” Dean replies, frowning. "You tellin' me this isn't tickling your funny bone? With the corny elevator, and the French ghost dude?"

“It’s based on a misreading of the fundamental principles of metaphysics,” Castiel replies, prompting Dean to roll his eyes.

Five minutes later, Jack declares himself tired; Castiel does not blame him. They pause the movie so that Castiel can remind him not to stay up late reading the comic books Sam bought for him before he left for Minnesota.

“Stop nagging, you dweeb,” says Dean.

And then Castiel and Dean are left alone in the close, familiar darkness of the den. It’s comfortable and warm; these moments of calm spent at Dean’s side are some of Castiel’s happiest since he returned. So far, they have added to the westerns Dean had already made him watch by making their way through most of the work of Mel Brooks, and now Dean seems to be on a mission to introduce Castiel to movies he describes as ’stone-cold classics’. He keeps peppering their conversations with perplexing statements, such as _here’s looking at you, kid_. He seems happy, or at least, happier than Castiel remembers seeing him in a number of weeks.

“Hey,” Dean says, while the movie hovers in suspended animation on the projector screen. "I’m thinking of taking him out for pizza. He still hasn’t had a real Chicago deep-dish. Figured we could make it a road trip, take the rods, get in some fishing on the way back.”

“Dean, Jack is still recovering.”

“I know, I know. Just think it’d be healthy for him to get out for a while, show him some more of the world outside Lebanon. All this time cooped up‘d be driving me crazy.”

Castiel raises an eyebrow. “You just like having an amenable fishing companion, since Sam and I won’t abide it.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean says, stretching widely, popping his joints in a way that Castiel has always found mildly disconcerting. “You’re philistines. Jack gets the appeal.”

“I fail to see what the historical worship of Dagon has to do with anything,” Castiel says, because putting on a display of his old naivety is still a reliable method of making Dean smile. “Just as I fail to see why humans have developed such a love of standing about in rivers failing to catch fish.”

“The fish are not the point,” says Dean. They've had this argument so often Castiel could repeat it back to him verbatim, from _it’s a sport_ to _maybe it’d help you learn some damn patience._

“Fish aside,” Castiel says, gravely, “I appreciate what you’re doing for him.”

Dean gives an awkward shrug. “You don’t need to thank me, man.”

“I want to. There are innumerable aspects of humanity that I’m still ill-equipped to help him understand.”

“Don’t put yourself down; you can quote Star Wars with the best of them, these days," Dean says, jostling Castiel's knee with his own. "C’mon, you're doing the best you can.”

“I have absolutely no idea what constitutes ‘the best’,” Castiel says testily, "nor any way of knowing whether it’s working." 

He has no desire to articulate the jealousy he feels when he sees Jack and Sam sharing laughter over a video Sam has shown him on the internet, or when Dean drops a hand on Jack’s shoulder and he lights up from the inside, so full of admiration, and they both achieve without trying what Castiel has been attempting unsuccessfully for days. Jack loves them, and Castiel is more grateful for it than he can say; he just wishes he knew how to conjure the same smile onto Jack’s face, instead of smothering him with the weight of his love and concern, but he has never been much good at levity.

“Well, I dunno,” Dean says, shifting uncomfortably. "So long as none of us go repeating our dads' mistakes, I guess.”

“A somewhat low bar to parenthood."

Dean snorts, raising a toast. “Ain’t that the truth.”

When Castiel glances at him, he’s knocking back the last of his beer, smiling wryly around it, his eyes creased and fond. He has one arm extended across the back of the couch, close enough that it’s a long stretch of warmth along Castiel's shoulders. It would be the most natural thing in the world, the most comfortable thing, to lean into the radius of his warmth. Castiel is almost entirely certain Dean would welcome it, but merely imagining closing the distance between them wakes something hopeful within him, and it prompts memories of the Empty’s promises dripping from Duma’s vacant mouth.

Dean sets his empty bottle on the floor and glances at him, licking at the corner of his lips. “So, uh. I’ve been thinking about what happens when this thing with Michael goes south again,” he says, without preamble, eyes intent on Castiel’s face.

“Dean, we will find a way,” Castiel insists.

“Yeah, I know, I know. Just… humor me, alright? You remember that promise you made, when I still had the Mark?”

“Dean…”

“Do you remember what you promised?”

Dean had been halfway through Castiel's burger in a bar in Illinois, the last time he had asked him to kill him. He'd watched Dean make his way through his second plate of food, tried once again to impress upon Dean the fact of his own worth, and found himself promising to do the very thing he'd been dispatched to Earth to prevent. “Of course," he says.

“Well, then," Dean says, with a grim, earnest twist of his mouth. "We got three plans: plan A, which we’re drawing a blank on right now; plan B; and plan C.”

“Neither Sam nor I will countenance using the Ma’lak box," Castiel says, before Dean can suggest it.

“Yeah, well. Plenty of things I couldn’t countenance ’til I didn’t have a choice. That’s plan B.”

Castiel’s stomach turns, wishing he had persuaded Sam to assist him in setting the thing on fire before it could be installed in the storage room. “And plan C?”

Dean looks at him steadily. “If the time comes, I might need to call in that promise.”

“If I thought it was what you truly wanted, Dean, I would stand by it, but-”

“It ain’t about what I want, Cas. It’s about stopping me from letting that asshole rip the world into pieces.”

Castiel sighs heavily. “Even if it were necessary, Dean, you’ve witnessed the limits of my ability to challenge Michael. I fear I wouldn’t get very far.”

“No,” Dean agrees. “But you might buy Sammy and Jack a little time. You might stop him long enough for them to get out of the blast radius, if Michael goes nuclear. And if you get close enough to kill me… well, I’d rather be dead than that douchecanoe’s meat suit again. Capisce?”

Reluctantly, Castiel nods. Dean’s been drinking, but no more so than usual. On the screen, Kim Hunter’s face hovers above them, earnest and distressed. Dean’s headache is throbbing just beneath Castiel’s usual level of awareness, but if he reaches out a little, brushes the borders of Dean’s presence with the edges of his grace, he senses the cacophony, the pounding of Michael’s will against the walls that confine it.

He feels foolish for mistaking Dean’s determined cheerfulness these past few days for happiness. He should have noted the desperation in the way Dean’s been trying to gather up moments of time with them all: promises of fishing and pizza, movie nights, encouraging Sam to spend time on his own with Mary, the way he’d have to if Dean were no longer around.

“Hey,” Dean says. “If I take another one for the team, maybe I'll get my wings, after all. Gotta look on the bright side.”

“By rights, you and Sam have earned a place in Heaven many times over,” Castiel says, looking him in the eye.

The smile falters and Dean looks distinctly discomfited. “Cas, c’mon. It was a joke. Who needs Heaven, anyway? The greatest hits are never as good as the albums. I need a bit of grit in my coffee, or it just don’t taste the same."

“It’s the height of hubris, Dean, to complain like this at the prospect of eternal contentment."

“Well, my idea of paradise is something a little more revved up than that, is all I’m saying," Dean says. He glances down at the empty bottle he’s managed to kick over. It rolls in a circle and comes to rest against the side of his foot. “Figure I’d rather go down in flames on earth than wait on some vanilla snoozefest in the hereafter, in any case. I’m just about done waiting for things to get better down here, before I try and get me something good.”

Castiel has been aware for some time of how close Dean is sitting to him on the couch. In the course of the conversation they’ve turned to face one another, and Dean has lifted his knee onto the cushions in order to be able to look Castiel in the eye, and now it presses warmly into the side of Castiel’s thigh. Dean’s arm along the back of the couch brackets him, and Castiel realises this was Dean’s design all along, after Jack made his departure, when he began to stretch so expansively: he’s been subjected to one of Dean’s moves. Despite himself, it makes him tender and fond.

He considers the divergent paths leading from this moment: he ought to speak to Dean in earnest about finding a conscionable solution to the problem of Michael; he’d rather let Dean shift closer and make good on the promise of the tentative hand that’s found its way to the inside of the curve of his knee. The blood in his vessel’s veins pulses hot and quick and he _wants_ in a way he had hoped he'd begun to forget.

“Dean,” he says. Nearly two years ago, _I love you_ had made Dean’s shoulders heavy, his mouth tight and unhappy, his eyes sliding over Castiel's like oil on water. It had led to scant minutes of relief under Dean’s hands in the passenger seat of the Impala, and to Dean refusing, afterwards, to talk about the words he’d mouthed into Castiel’s sensitive, freshly-healed skin. “This is not a good idea."

For a painful moment, Dean sways towards him, his eyes dipping towards Castiel’s mouth. Castiel waits, uncertain he possesses the will to refuse him. His misgivings must be evident in his expression because Dean catches himself and rears backwards against the arm of the couch.

“Right,” he says, sounding as serious and regretful as Castiel has ever heard him. “No, you’re right. Shit, sorry, Cas."

“No, Dean, I’m sorry -"

“It’s fine.” Dean is looking at the floor, at the projector screen, at Jack’s discarded bowl of popcorn on the arm of the other chair. “Look, don’t sweat it, alright. I’ve had too much to drink, all the stuff with -” he gestures vaguely in the direction of his head.

“Should I restart the movie?” Castiel asks helplessly.

Dean scrubs a hand over his face. “You know what, I think I’m just gonna hit the hay. It’s been a hell of a week. You, uh - you carry on watching. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Castiel watches him collect the empty bottle and Jack’s bowl of popcorn, time in which he could reach out and close his fingers loosely around Dean's wrist to prevent him from leaving. He could let the pad of his thumb settle on the delicate skin that covers the beating point of Dean's pulse, let it lie there, and feel the way Dean's pulse quickens, but he doesn't. Dean is gone in seconds, leaving Castiel alone with the static hum of the projector and Kim Hunter's tear-streaked face suspended on the wall across the room.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've been with me since the beginning, you'll notice there have been some shenanigans with the chapter order - I'm finally happy with the shape of this story, so there'll be an absolute minimum of interfering with things from here on out. Thanks for sticking with me this far... here's to achieving some kind of emotional closure in the next and final chapter.

~~**Starting a quarrel is like breaching a dam  
So drop the matter before a dispute breaks out.**  
_Proverbs 17:14_ ~~

**I just jumped a train that never stops  
So now somehow I'll know I never finished payin' for my ride  
Just n' someone pushed a gun into my hand  
Tell me I'm the type of man to fight the fight that I'll require.**  
_’Night Flight’ - Jones/Page/Plant_

**Rexford, Idaho - 2013**

“You’re in a good mood today.”

Marcy, a teenage sales associate who chews gum aggressively whenever Castiel tries to make conversation during shift switchovers, is glowering at him as though his good humour is, in and of itself, a crime against humanity. 

Becoming human has been an exercise in humility. Before, Castiel would have claimed that emotion is not alien to angels; it might as well be, for all that _being_ an angel had prepared him for this. Happiness used to mean satisfaction in the execution of orders; now, it’s a burst of something bright and thrilling in the centre of his chest when the proprietor of the gas station - ‘ _call me Nora_ ’ - says he can have the job, providing he can start immediately. The onslaught of sensation that was, at first, frightening has settled into something vivid and rich, but no less overwhelming. The range of his hearing is much diminished, but the warmth and the timbre of every sound in his immediate environment makes him want to tap every surface, just to hear the variations in the pitch and depth of its vibration. He knows hunger, and the heavy, sated feeling of having eaten his fill. Being human is to constantly observe a shifting kaleidoscope, where an angel perceives only the purest, steadiest light and the negative space around it. 

The unpredictability of the ways in which his mood shifts has taken him by surprise. He can wake in the morning feeling contented, and find that a customer snaps at him for his inability to count change quickly enough, plunging him into an abyss of self-recrimination. Nora laughs good naturedly at him and tells him to have confidence in his abilities, but it transpires that ‘having confidence’ is not something that can be accomplished by will alone.

There is a list of tasks to be accomplished every morning and evening at the gas station. He finds it reassuring to have a clear set of instructions and a reliable measure of his achievement. So far, he is on track: his next task will be to refill the hot drinks urns, after which he likes to take advantage of what Marcy calls the ‘perks of the job’ and drink a cup of fresh black coffee while waiting for the six o’clock news to be broadcast on the radio. Last night he slept almost an entire five hours without being woken by the static hum of the vending machine, slipped out of the rear exit before Marcy arrived to open up for the morning shift, and spent some of his pay on breakfast at a cafe on the main street in town. He’d sat in a window seat watching the people of Rexford make their way to work, parents driving their children to school, and felt an enormous sense of wellbeing at participating in this slice of everyday human existence.

“I am,” he says, decisively. Marcy rolls her eyes on her way out the door. 

**One month earlier:**

“You can’t stay.”

Castiel didn’t like to dwell on it, but sometimes he found it impossible not to.

He saw, now, that it would have been easier, if Dean had cut him away cleanly. Dean’s soul was as familiar to him as his own grace was before he fell, and if there was a reason, then Castiel couldn’t blame Dean for making the choice he had. It was just that the clarity of his understanding was clouded, now, by the jagged pull of emotion. He'd tried to make sense of it, but his human heart ached.

It would have been better if Dean had forced him to walk out of the bunker and allowed Castiel to think of him badly. Instead, Dean had tried to be kind, handing him a rucksack, tucking a fold of bills into the top pocket of his shirt. 

“Should have enough there for a motel. I dunno how long...” He cleared his throat. “It’ll see you good for a couple weeks.”

It was on the tip of Castiel’s tongue to express gratitude, or to ask what he was supposed to do after the money ran out, but the only feeling bubbling, unbidden, in the centre of his chest was one he didn’t yet understand, so he kept it behind his teeth. 

“Take this,” Dean said, handing him a cheap cell phone. “My number’s in there. For emergencies.”

Dean drove him to the centre of town, Castiel climbed out of the passenger seat and closed the door, and Dean leaned across to look up at him out of the open window. 

“Take care of yourself,” Dean said, and Castiel was about to tell him the same when Dean lifted his hand in a wave and pulled away from the kerb, his eyes on the oncoming traffic.

It had taken Castiel three days to reach Idaho. It had been a frantic, bewildering, terrifying time. 

Regarding his reflection in his motel room’s bathroom mirror, he took stock of the condition of this body - _his_ body, now. If it was to serve him for the rest of his mortal lifetime, he would need to take care of it. Assessing its needs was a more involved process than he could have imagined when his grace took care of his vessel’s upkeep. For example, his frame was slim and lightly muscled, with strength stored in its shoulders, the upper parts of his arms, the breadth of his thighs. Since he left the bunker, he'd found keeping his body nourished to be more time-consuming and costly than he had anticipated; he’d assumed that going to bed with an emptiness in his stomach, a lack of satiety, was another annoying side-effect of humanity, until he’d realised that he'd been losing weight. He would need to ensure he was eating a diet higher in nutritional value, if he was to remain healthy, which meant that subsisting on prepackaged convenience food from gas stations along the road was no longer a sustainable method of feeding himself. Likewise, his days spent slumped in the motel room would do nothing to maintain the modest muscle mass his body carried. Some form of exercise would be necessary. Sam, he knew, had taken to going running in the mornings, before the strain of carrying out the trials had made it impossible. Perhaps running and some form of strengthening exercise would help him to feel less feeble when he hefted his newly acquired rucksack and attempted to lug it out of the hold of yet another cross-country bus.

Beyond these most basic needs, his body remained largely a mystery. It was a miracle, like all of God’s creations, and the way it functioned as such an efficient interconnecting system of blood and sinew and tissue was fascinating, if sometimes frightening in its unfamiliarity. Standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, he took in the most obvious and most painful of the changes. There was no dissonance, now, between Jimmy Novak’s face and his own angelic form hovering above it. There was just his face, and it stared back at him, sad around the eyes, mouth turned down in an expression of terminal confusion. His hair was getting long, and there was a darkening shadow on the lower half of his face that made him look disreputable. For the third time in as many days he was overwhelmed by a wave of hopelessness at the never-ending nature of his human body’s need for upkeep and maintenance.

He had three hundred dollars of Dean’s money still folded in the back pocket of his jeans. He woke up that morning hungry, and the thought of miserably choking down another cellophane wrapped sandwich was disagreeable. He’d been trying so hard not to waste money, living as though he could eke it out to last forever, as though if he could make it last long enough, Dean would call to say that it was time for him to make his way back to Lebanon. 

That morning he went, instead of to the gas station, to the diner across the street from his motel and surveyed the breakfast options. There was a giddy, guilty sense of freedom bubbling in his chest, now that he had made a resolution to spend Dean’s money the way Dean would want him to. He gazed down the list of foodstuffs he was familiar with only through watching Sam and Dean take enjoyment in consuming them, and chose the thing that looked the most like he might enjoy it.

“I will have a ‘Leaning Tower of Pancakes',” he said, when the waitress came to take his order. “And a coffee. Thank you.”

“Sure thing, hon,” the waitress said, smiling at him. He smiled back, because this was how he had observed Sam setting people at ease, and when she brought him his pancakes she smiled at him again and said, “Extra syrup. Look like you could use some cheerin’ up.”

She turned away to take another table’s order before he could thank her again, but somehow it settled the panic that had been swirling in his chest, the desperate feeling he’d been trying to ignore since Dean dropped him at the bus station. He resolved to leave a hefty tip to express his gratitude for her kindness.

He was back to thinking about his departure from the bunker again, there was no point pretending otherwise. The warm glow left by the waitress’ kindness settled into the leaden feeling of regret that resided, always, in the pit of his stomach. It swooped and churned when he least expected it, taking him unawares in the middle of brushing his teeth or taking a shower, and it was all he could do to direct himself to focus on something else, to ignore it, because dwelling on it would do him no good. The human mind was difficult to corral into obedience; he ignored the unwelcome thought that his human heart was inconveniently recalcitrant, too.

What he needed was a sense of purpose. He cut a forkful of pancakes and resolved to try his hand at finding employment in the next town he arrived at. 

**Lebanon, Kansas**

Karen Singer, before she blew her brains out to prevent herself from going full George A. Romero, had looked straight through Dean, once upon a time, like she could see past the flannel and the bluster right into the heart of him. He still remembers her assessment of the meaning of love: _My job is to bring him peace, not pain._

Personally, Dean thinks that’s bullshit. But he didn’t know shit about love then, either, so he’d eaten his pie and edged out the room and then been distracted by fighting off a town full of zombies. Karen Singer’s thoughts on love, life and everything were somewhat undermined, in any case, by her subsequently developing a taste for human flesh, and Dean had put them out of his mind in the service of not dying bloody in the middle of Bobby’s junkyard.

“You want coffee?”

Sam’s got a damp towel folded round the back of his neck and he’s wearing the disgusting, chipper, rosy-faced look of someone who got up early to go and be virtuous in the outdoors. Dean grunts in the affirmative and Sam snorts, clattering about at the coffee machine.

“Earth to Dean,” he says, waving a steaming mug in front of Dean's face. “How late did you stay up?”

Dean kills the screen on his phone and glances up at him; Sam’s wearing an expression of constipated concern. “Did Kevin finally tell you to stick the mother hen routine? ’S that why you’re trying it on me?”

Sam rolls his eyes and goes back to the stove. “Dude, I’m just saying, you look like crap.”

“Well, now I feel a million bucks, so thanks for that.”

“Morning,” Kevin says blearily, stumbling into the kitchen with his hair plastered to one side of his face. If anyone looks like crap, Dean’s fairly sure it’s not him taking the prize.

“Morning,” Sam replies, “Sleep alright?"

Dean’s more grateful than he can say for Kevin’s presence in the bunker. Sam’s so protective it’s like watching a mother bear fuss over her cubs; Dean snorts when Kevin responds to it with a withering glare and flings himself into a chair with as much exhausted petulance as Dean has ever seen him exhibit. Kevin’s a good kid. Sometimes being in the room with Sam on his own gives Dean a tension headache; scanning his face, constantly on the look-out for signs of impending disaster, without looking like a psychopath is tricky; doing it without Sam realising something’s up is pretty much impossible, but Dean’s fairly sure that, knowing his luck, the minute he lets his guard down is when the whole thing will go to shit. He sighs, pushing his thumbs into the corners of his eyes. 

Sam putters around making an egg-white omelette, while Kevin retrieves and nurses a mug of coffee nearly bigger than his own head. Dean flicks on his phone’s home screen, cycles through his notifications. 

“He get in touch yet?” Sam says, forehead folded in concern again, when he sits down at the table with his plate of protein sadness. 

Dean flicks the phone screen off again. It’s too early in the morning to bother with the pretence of pretending he doesn’t know what Sam’s talking about, and he needs aspirin to dull the throbbing pain at the base of his skull. “Nuh-uh.”

“You texted him, right? Said to let us know where he is?”

“Yeah, I told you,” Dean says, draining the last of his coffee and shoving the phone back in his pocket. 

Sam’s eyeing him doubtfully with that pigheaded twist to his mouth that means he thinks Dean’s full of shit and he’s trying to work out how to call him on it without Dean making out he's the asshole.

“Do we have any books on Minoan Linear A?" Kevin says miserably. "I feel like staring at something else no one can translate might make me feel better about my life choices.”

Dean makes his escape while Sam's drawn into an earnest conversation about yet another dead language and heads straight for the garage. He checks his phone again on the way; he’s aware he’s embarrassing himself, but goddamn it, he’s worried. Cas had straight up asked for help in learning how to be human. Is it so far out there to be concerned that maybe he’s forgotten that electrical items need to be re-charged in order to function? God only knows what Cas’s first few days and nights out there alone have been like for him. 

The headache’s grinding insistently behind Dean’s eyes, and his stomach’s roiling against a breakfast consisting of nothing but coffee, and there’s a feeling he knows all-too-well gnawing away underneath it all, like a sickness growing inside him, the knowledge of what a shitheel he is making him sick to his stomach.

 _Let me know ur ok_ , he starts to type, before deleting it and pushing the phone back into his pocket. 

The thing is. The thing is, Dean wouldn’t blame Cas if he’d crushed that burner phone under the heel of his shoe and tossed it into a dumpster.

  


* * *

  


Dean’s flat on his back staring up at the underside of Baby’s exhaust pipe when his phone finally vibrates against the worktop; he curses, rolling himself out from under her, and by the time he reaches the phone, it’s stopped ringing. He stands looking down at it for a while, wondering whether pressing ‘call back’ would be a wise decision. His thumb’s hovering over the icon when the phone vibrates again to tell him he has a voicemail. He narrowly avoids dropping it into his cold mug of coffee.

_“Dean, I am fine. It’s been… surprisingly educational, riding the Greyhound and staying in a motel, as you suggested. ‘All human life is here’, as I believe the saying goes. You do not need to be concerned.”_

An automated voice asks if Dean wishes to repeat the message and he stares dumbly at the key pad for a moment before choosing to save it instead.

 _Glad ur ok, man_ , he types in a text. He stares at it for a while, then presses ’send’ and thumps the phone back onto the workbench.

The thing is. The thing is, for all of thirty seconds, while Cas trotted off to devour a burrito and Dean rocked back on his heels to contemplate what it would mean, having him around full-time, he’d actually felt the jigsaw pieces slotting into place: Sam was on the mend, however long it was gonna take; Kevin was working flat out in a way that Dean found grudgingly impressive, even if he wasn’t ever gonna tell the kid that; and now Cas was taking pleasure in long, hot showers and eating Dean’s burritos and setting out his intention to stay. The last time Dean had felt this good, he’d been waving a sword around and playing handmaiden to the Queen of Moondoor.

And then, like the universe just needed to remind him that it thinks he's an asshole, it all slipped through his fingers. He’d had to make the choice - always, with the choices, and who the hell did he think he was, anyway, to think everything would come up roses, like that? - and put that wounded, betrayed look all over Cas’ newly human face.

“The fuck did you expect?” he mutters as he wheels himself back under Baby’s chassis.

  


* * *

  


_"I may have a case for you,”_ is not the way Dean imagined their next conversation would go.

It doesn’t stop him throwing his things in a duffle and heading out the door before Sam or Kevin can say anything to stop him. All this time in the bunker’s making him stir-crazy; sneaking constant sideways glances at Sam to check he hasn’t gone troppo is making him crazier. At the other end of the line, Cas had sounded distracted and peeved, so human that Dean had wanted to reach through the phone and poke him, just to make sure it was real.

It’s only when he’s leaning on the roof of the Impala in the parking lot outside the Gas-N-Sip, watching Cas converse with a customer, that he realises that what Cas had said: _Dean, there’s a monster in Idaho, I thought someone should be informed,_ did not amount to what he’d wanted to hear: _Dean, I saw something on the news and thought of you, come find me._

Still, it’s too late to chicken out, now. It’d be just his luck that Cas would glance out the window just in time to see him climb back in the car and disappear down the highway, and then he’d look like a coward as well as a creeper. He downs the last of his coffee. Time to make like Woody Harrelson in that zombie movie they caught at the theater the last time they had some unexpected down time in Phoenix.

“Nut up or shut up,” he mutters, tossing the coffee cup into the trash.

  


* * *

  


So, they dust a renegade angel, Cas’ date gets shot down in flames, and Dean’s pretty happy about all of it, because the evening concludes with the two of them holed up in a diner, slumped on leatherette benches on the opposite sides of a sticky table, smiling at each other over the menu cards and ordering too much greasy food.

Cas is so human, all soft, sad edges, almost too painful to look at head-on. Dean’s tried to be a decent human being, tried to be a wingman, helped Cas the best he could with his problems, but now Cas is sitting in front of him guzzling his fifth coffee and looking so real, so goddamn tangible, it’s making Dean loopy. He keeps wanting to reach across the sticky tabletop and touch the back of Cas’ hand, just to confirm that he’s warm and alive and here. Dean’s had dreams that started like this, guilty ones, so excuse him if he’s having trouble with the distinction between reality and porn, again.

“More coffee?”

They’ve been sitting in this booth for three hours, long enough that the waitress has given up trying to hassle them into ordering more food. It feels like all of thirty minutes have gone by since they pulled up outside. If Dean didn’t know better, he’d think he was buzzed; there’s something stupid and happy bubbling under his ribcage.

“Sure, why not,” he says, grinning, and the waitress - Laurie - rolls her eyes as she pours it out.

“Thank you,” Cas says earnestly when she tops up his cup, earning himself a grudging smile before she moves onto the next table.

“Let me get this straight,” Dean says, returning to their previous conversation. “You managed to catch a classic Star Wars marathon and you’re still of the opinion that _Erin Brokovich_ is the greatest movie of all time?”

“I didn’t say ‘greatest of all time’, Dean. I said ‘best of the six mildly diverting movies I happen to have watched in my motel room before I took the job at the Gas-N-Sip’.”

“Amounts to the same thing for you, dude; we’ve gotta broaden your horizons.”

“I highly doubt that my exposure to a wider range of popular culture will alter my opinion that the small, violent bears made for an unconvincing rebel militia.”

“You’re so full of shit,” Dean says, sitting back in his seat with a grin so wide it's making his cheeks hurt. “And you know damn well they’re called Ewoks.”

Cas smiles, the corners of his eyes all creased and amused, as if to say: _busted_. Without the weight of Cas’ grace between them, or perhaps with Cas’ mannerisms so much more human, Dean feels lighter than he has in months. It makes him giddy and reckless: so, Cas can’t come home to the bunker, but there’s nothing to stop Dean coming to visit, whenever he has the opportunity. They could make it a regular thing. The phrase _long-distance relationship_ slides into his brain unbidden and he stamps on it immediately. There’s no point being foolish; there’s no way in hell Cas would want -

It’s just that, right now, right this second, he doesn’t want this stupid conversation about the movies Cas watched on his motel TV to end.

“Do I have something on my face?” Cas asks, frowning.

“What? No. Dude, what?”

“You were smiling at me,” Cas says, his own mouth tilted in an expression of happiness and confusion. The wariness around his eyes, the air of waiting for Dean to disappoint him, is lurking there, just out of sight, and Dean would do just about anything to keep it at bay, just for this one night, just until he can climb back in the car and skulk away back to Kansas.

“Call the cops,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Guy can’t smile at his best friend, now?”

“I’m glad to see you happy, Dean,” Cas says softly, seriously, over the rim of his coffee cup.

Dean glances around them. There’s a trucker finishing an all-night breakfast two booths down, and a young couple at the table on their left, no more than eighteen by the looks of them. Dean can imagine the story without trying: skipping town, maybe he got her knocked up, and they’re out here in the Mid-west, in love and out of cash, drinking coffee in a roadside diner to keep warm until the next bus arrives to take them closer to California.

There’s no way to say _I haven’t been_ or _I am now I’m here_ without it sounding like a declaration, so he clears his throat and throws Cas another cautious smile. There's a motel room down the road with crummy TV and cheap booze and a double bed with Dean’s name on it. Maybe they can find another movie marathon on cable and prop themselves up against the headboard to watch it. Cas will make stupid comments about how it’s all a metaphor for man’s relationship with the divine, and Dean can go back to Kansas tomorrow morning with a spring in his step, knowing he’s saved Cas from a lonely night smarting over Nora’s rejection. It’s been so long since he’s been able to kick back and breathe in the bunker without worrying about Sam, a little more R’n’R in Cas’s company definitely wouldn’t hurt.

“Look,” he says, reaching for his wallet. “It’s a long drive and I’m gonna need at least an hour’s sleep before I haul ass back to Kansas. I’ve got a room at the motel ‘cross town.”

Cas face falls. “Of course, Dean. I’m sorry, it was selfish of me to take up so much of your evening.” Dean’s about to scoff - _Don’t be an ass, Cas, you think there’s anywhere else I’d rather be on a Friday night?_ \- but Cas is staring into his cup like Laurie’s bitter coffee has gone and broken his heart. “I’d be grateful if you could drop me back at the Gas-N-Sip."

“What?”

Cas looks up, frowning. “I’d be grateful for a ride back to the Gas-N-Sip. You need to sleep, Dean; I understand.”

“You want me to take you back?” Dean says, embarrassment flaring in the pit of his stomach. Of course Cas doesn’t want to come back to Dean’s motel and watch some shitty movie marathon. Guy has a job to be fresh for; he’s got that Nora chick to impress, in the morning, if he’s still hung up in that direction.

Cas frowns, glancing up at him from beneath his lashes. “I realise it’s out of your way, and I’d be happy to walk, but I find that I feel the cold, now, and I didn’t bring a jacket -”

“Jesus, Cas,” Dean says, slamming down enough bills to cover the coffee and the burgers. “I’m not gonna make you walk.”

He strides out the diner and across the parking lot without waiting for Cas to follow, hears him thanking Laurie and footsteps hurrying across the asphalt. He tucks himself behind the wheel and waits for Cas to slip into the passenger seat. When he does, he looks at Dean expectantly, a frown and a question hovering just over the horizon, so Dean shoves a cassette into the tape deck and turns it all the way up.

The Gas-N-Sip is just up the highway from Dean’s motel, across town from the diner, and by the time they pull into the parking lot, halfway through _In My Time of Dying_ , Dean’s braced for Cas leaping out of the car and heading back to his new life with barely a glance over his shoulder in Dean’s direction.

Instead, they both climb out and Cas hovers awkwardly, glancing between the Impala and the front door of the gas station.

“Guess this is goodbye, then,” Dean says, because ripping off the band-aid is better than trying to ease it.

“I suppose it is.” Dean can’t bear to watch him retreat into the sickly, fluorescent glow of the forecourt, so he turns to clamber back into the car, but Cas says, “Wait a moment, Dean," before hurrying away across the parking lot.

Dean watches him break into an awkward jog and disappear around the back of the building, and leans back against the driver's door, cursing his over-active imagination. A regular thing, my ass. Cas has made it clear Dean ought to get back on the road. The longer he stays, the harder it is to ignore the tug of self-recrimination that this is what he must have wanted, this is what he’d known might happen, when he told Cas to leave.

“Here,” Cas says, jogging back to him across the parking lot. His hand’s outstretched and he’s handing Dean a roll of twenties, held together with an elastic band. “Two hundred and fifty is yours, anyway, but I made up the rest from my wages.”

“What the hell, Cas?”

“I wanted to repay you, now that I’m able to.”

Dean stares at the roll of bills in his hand. “It was a gift,” he says, dumbly. "I didn’t want - you weren’t supposed to give it back, you freak.”

Cas shrugs. “I didn’t like feeling indebted. I wanted to repay you, for encouraging me to make a life for myself.”

Ain’t that a kick in the teeth. Dean’s hanging on texts and listening to that goddamn voicemail over and over, living on the guilt of that godawful drive back to the bunker from the bus station, and Cas just wants the slate cleaned.

“Well, you sure did that,” he snaps, knowing he’s making a fool of himself.

“Dean,” Cas says, like he’s going to want Dean to explain why he’s being an ass about this.

“It’s fine, Cas. I appreciate it. Look, I need to get back on the road. See y’around, alright.”

He knows Cas is staring at him, but if he meets that patient, bewildered gaze he'll feel even more of an idiot. He opens the car door and slides inside, jamming the key back into the ignition.

“See you around,” Cas says, softly. Dean ignores him, and he hears Cas’s footsteps retreat, those incongruous sneakers padding across the concrete.

He ought to turn the key, swing Baby out of the parking lot, and put this whole sorry mess in his rear-view mirror. He definitely ought not to glance out the window before he does it.

Cas looks small and defeated in his crumpled shirt and his Goodwill jeans that are too long for his legs. He’s holding his injured hand against his chest like he’s suddenly remembered it’s painful, and he’s about to trudge back inside a gas station and - what? _Sleep_ there? Is this how Cas has managed to save the money to pay him back?

He’s got the window rolled down before he registers what he’s doing. “Cas, wait up!”

Cas looks around so quickly Dean’s worried he’ll give himself whiplash, a stupid, hopeful, wary expression on his face. Dean turns the key in the ignition and cruises in a wide circle to pull up in front of him, leaning over to open the passenger door.

“Look,” he says, "you can’t get cleaned up properly in some crappy gas station bathroom. I got a med kit at the motel.”

Cas hesitates, frowning. “Don’t you need to get back to Kansas?"

Dean rolls his eyes at his own stupidity. Of course Cas bought that; of course he thinks Dean must have a valid reason to flee, apart from the fact that he’s chickenshit when it comes to experiencing feelings. “Get in the car, Cas. Please.”

  


* * *

  


Dean unlocks his motel room door and lets Cas inside, feeling unaccountably nervous. He's jittery from all the caffeine and running on too little sleep to be in a state to examine the reasons why. He seeks a distraction, turns on the TV and flicks to a channel that’s showing re-runs of the original _Hawaii 5-0_.

“Here,” he says, brandishing the medical kit he keeps at the bottom of his duffle. “Let’s get you fixed up.”

“I can clean the wound myself,” Cas says, when Dean ushers him to sit on the end of the bed and folds one knee under himself to sit beside him, already peeling off the bloodied towel Cas had re-tied after washing the gash on his palm in the rest room at the diner.

Dean snorts, putting the towel to one side and picking Cas’ hand up to inspect it in the sickly light of the motel room’s bare yellow lightbulb. “Yeah, and you’d claim it was a flesh wound even if you had a broken leg with the bone pokin’ out.”

“Dean.”

“Just - let me, alright?” Dean avoids his eyes in favour of picking out a needle and the box of dental floss. He doesn’t want to have to articulate the need to get his hands on Cas’ skin, to check that he’s still in one Cas-shaped piece, and if Cas keeps pushing, it’s gonna get real awkward, real quick. Thankfully, Cas subsides, letting Dean lay his injured hand palm-up on the bony curve of his knee. “Could do with a couple of stitches.”

Cas grimaces. “Are you sure?”

“‘Less you want it opening up again the minute you flex your hand. Perks of being human, huh?”

“It was much more convenient to be able to heal minor wounds at will,” Cas admits. He stares at the wound morosely for a moment. “I don’t know how humans have survived so long in such an utterly vulnerable state."

Cas is silent for long enough that Dean glances at him, only to find him gazing at the TV screen over Dean’s shoulder, his expression blank and distant. He pours alcohol over the wound, watches Cas try to contain the urge to flinch.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, making sure the needle’s doused in booze, as well. “Can’t be all bad, right?”

Cas hisses when Dean pushes the needle through his skin. “It is bewildering,” he says, glumly.

“Hey, man,” Dean says, pulling carefully at the stitch he’s made. “I’m sorry I brought it up, we don’t have to talk about it."

“It’s alright, Dean. You’re right, it isn’t all bad. I can see you, now, for one thing."

Dean glances up at him. “Fairly sure that’s not a new development.”

“No, I mean, with my grace, I could see more than your physical appearance. Your soul has always been open to me, visible. Now, I see your face without any interference. I realise now that the ability to see souls was quite, quite beautiful.”

“Well, gee,” says Dean, even though his better sense is begging him to shut the hell up. "I’m sorry we boring ol’ ape-creatures are such a disappointment.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Cas says, smiling at him. “I feel privileged to be able to see you, now, in your corporeal form. It’s beautiful too, Dean.”

Dean stares, he can’t help himself: there’s something low and terrified twisting in his chest, because he’s not supposed to feel _flattered_ or like he can’t take a goddamn breath, just because a man - because _Cas_ \- has called him pretty. That’s been a constant in Dean’s life for longer than he cares to remember.

The thing is. The thing is, Dean keeps making leaps of logic and trying to fit Cas into boxes he better understands. He started to think of Cas as a friend, and Cas disappeared to fight a war against Raphael; he started putting together the pizza man, that move Cas pulled on Meg on their journey into Hell, and the fact that even homeless and dishevelled Cas apparently had game, and coming up with something really freakin’ intriguing, only for Cas to revert to his default setting of bewilderment in the face of human sexuality. Lately he’s been getting increasingly stupid ideas about bringing Cas back to the bunker and damning the consequences, about family and feelings, and Cas has done absolutely nothing to encourage him; Dean’s got no one to blame for this but himself.

Right now, he's staring down the barrel of a couple of choices. Bringing Cas back to the motel was a mistake. Dean’s been lonely, and Cas probably didn’t even realise what he was getting himself into, letting Dean buy him a burger and take him back to his motel room like he’s some down-on-his-luck twink Dean picked up at the side of the highway. The atmosphere between them has slid sideways, out of focus, in a way that Dean didn’t explicitly intend. He can set it on its legs again, get the evening back on course; or, he can let the sound of Cas’ breath rasping quietly across the space between them, the fact he smells like cheap whiskey and taquitos, tip the whole night into something else entirely. All evidence suggests Cas isn’t interested, throws out these signals without meaning to, but this has always been the problem with Cas: Dean has no map for him, and he’s not used to having this interaction with another human being be so ambiguous, a game of Russian roulette he doesn’t remember agreeing to play.

“Thanks, I guess,” he says, feeling like a heel. There are three neat stitches holding the edges of the gash on Cas’ palm together. He snips the floss. “You’re done, just need a dressing on it in the morning."

When he glances up again, Cas is still smiling at him, soft and lopsided, before his uninjured hand flies up to cover his mouth stretching in a wide yawn. “Sorry,” he says, blinking. “I still tend to overestimate my ability to function without sleep. Do you mind if I sleep here? I can always move to the couch, if it would make you more comfortable. This is your bed, after all.”

Dean shakes his head, setting his palms firmly against his thighs, denim frayed and worn under his fingertips. "Get your head down, it’s cool. Been a long night."

Cas nods and shuffles up the bed to lay his head on the pillow, still in his shirt sleeves and on top of the covers. It’s on the tip of Dean’s tongue to prompt him to brush his teeth, take off the shirt so it’s not a mess of creases in the morning, but the thought of going through some awkward bedtime routine, the two of them dancing around one another like they’re the freakin’ Odd Couple, makes panic claw its way up the inside of his throat. Cas is a grown man; if he wants to crash on top of the covers in his button-down and jeans, it’s his prerogative.

Dean reaches for the remote and turns the volume down so there’s only the faintest murmur of badly-scripted dialogue floating across the room. Behind him, as he starts packing away the medical kit, Cas makes a noise of gratitude and appears to fall asleep almost immediately.

  


* * *

  


When Dean wakes up the next morning, he’s alone, sprawled on top of the covers in his jeans and t-shirt, a crick in his neck where he’s slept propped against the headboard. He rubs a hand over his face and grimaces at the gritty, grimy feeling of his own skin.

“Good morning,” Cas says, his voice a rasp of pure, just-woken gravel. He's looking rumpled and exhausted under the sickly fluorescent bulb, peering at Dean around the bathroom door.

“Morning,” Dean says, clearing his throat. He pushes himself upright and shuffles his legs off the bed, fumbling for his phone on the bedside table to check the time.

“I’m sorry to ask,” Cas says, sounding apologetic, “but I’m due to open up the gas station at seven. Would you be able to drop me off there on your way out of town? I’ve left it too late to walk; I must have been very tired.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dean says, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Give me five minutes.”

The light breaking in between the curtains is pale and thin and it illuminates the hollow in the pillow where Cas spent the night. Dean has that sinking feeling of needing to escape, which is ridiculous, because nothing happened that would usually presage him needing to make a swift exit from a motel room the morning after the night before. He gets up and heads for the bathroom, but he’s mistimed his approach because Cas is still hovering in the doorway and they execute an embarrassing, awkward shuffle to get past one another.

He gets the door shut, thankful for a barrier between them and stares at himself in the mirror for a moment. The fluorescent bulb makes him look like a murderer, all hollow eyes and disreputable facial hair. The thing is. The thing is, last night was as much of an opportunity as Dean is ever going to get. For what? How in the hell is he supposed to know.

When he emerges into the room, Cas is standing at an approximation of parade rest next to the door, clearly anxious to be going. Dean ignores him and collects the few of his things he’d unpacked, shoving them into his duffel and checking his pockets for the usual set of weaponry, wallet and car keys.

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas says, when they’re out on the landing, quiet and far too earnest for this time in the morning.

Dean pretends returning the key to the front desk requires all of his attention. He’s got Karen Singer and those words of wisdom she laid on him while he wolfed down a slice of her incredible pie, orbiting his brain. In the car he jams _Physical Graffiti_ in the tape deck again and lets Robert Plant howl about how he can’t stop talkin’ 'bout love in order to stymie any attempt at conversation.

He’s not in a good place; he knows this because he spent most of the night flicking mindlessly through TV channels with Cas sprawled on the bed next to him, dwelling on memories of Dad and Pastor Jim. Thinking about all those years he'd spent believing Dad had been disappearing up to Minnesota to drop in on Jim. All those years he hadn’t said a fucking word about it to anybody. He’d felt so fucking bad for Dad when Jim died; he’d kept an eye on him, made sure Sammy didn’t make a big deal out of trying to talk about anybody’s feelings, and he’d felt proud, like it was his job, to keep this secret and know that, deep down, Dad was a little like him, that this thing about him wasn’t something that made him less of a Winchester, or less of anything else, either.

Then Adam had told them the truth about where John Winchester had spent his long weekends in Minnesota. Sam had sat there like he’d been pole-axed in the brain, and all Dean had felt was _stupid_ for holding Dad and Pastor Jim up as some kind of beacon of enlightenment, all these years. He’d kicked himself and let the confirmation of it burrow deeper into his bones: that men and women were for two different things, and it wasn’t a crime to want both, as long as you remembered which was which. It’s taken him years to work through some of his bullshit on that score.

So, he thought about all of it for a while, while Cas snored softly into his pillow, his injured hand stretched out on the bed between them, and then, as usual, thoughts of Pastor Jim had swiftly turned to thoughts of Lisa and Ben, and Dean wondering exactly who he thought he’d been fooling, trying to lay claim to that little slice of normality. In the end, he'd downed a fifth of the bottle of rotgut he’d poured on Cas’ hand and glared at some gameshow on the TV until he fell asleep.

The parking lot at the Gas-N-Sip is empty, so Dean pulls up right in front of the doors and turns down the volume, letting Cas get his words out, letting him thank Dean all over again for being a shitty human being and an even worse friend. Saying goodbye is just about the worst thing he’s had to do since he dumped Cas by the side of the road in Lebanon, and he wishes Cas would just get out of the car and get it over with, yank that band-aid off nice and clean.

“The angels,” Cas says instead, reminding Dean that he’s the only one selfish enough to be wallowing in his feelings, while there’s much bigger shit at stake. Cas looks to him for answers, and Dean has no idea why. “Can I really sit this out? Shouldn’t I be searching for a way to get them home?"

The thing is, it’s his fault Cas is here, and he can’t do a damn thing to fix it. It makes clear what should have been obvious from the get-go, that if Cas is to manage to build himself a life, find some measure of happiness, then being clear of hunting, being clear of Heaven and being clear of the Winchesters is the best thing Dean can do for him. The one thing that knowing him has never done, is bring Cas any kind of peace.

“Me and Sam’ll take care of the angels,” he says, in the end. “It’s not your problem anymore.”

Cas says goodbye with a tragic little wave of his hand, and Dean pulls the car away before he can second-guess it. This is for the best, for all of them.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has been a labour of love from beginning to end - thank you to everyone who’s stuck with it and left kudos/comments - means the world <3

**Better a dry morsel in quietness than a house full of feasting with strife.**  
_Proverbs 17:1_

Castiel first set foot upon the earth so long ago that mankind still spoke with one tongue. He heard their prayers above the hum of creation and was unmoved; it was another’s job to sift through the torrent of supplication and carry God’s word to the multitude. When he raised his sword to strike down the Tower and saw the peoples scattered, their voices made discordant, he paid it little heed. 

When Sodom and Gomorrah fell, Castiel ignored the tumult in the city below; he raised his sword as he was bade by the Host and smote a city already in ruins, for the Elamites had not been merciful in their long years of occupation. Castiel understood that by his actions, the misery of the people there, their desperation, their dissolution, might be cleansed.

Millennia later, when the Host assembled the armies of Heaven outside the Gates of Hell, Castiel knew only that his orders were to fight his way toward the condemned soul of the Righteous Man. He expected to become embroiled beside his brethren of the garrison in beating the Enemy back beyond their gates, holding the way open for the Seraphim to find this man and seize him. Instead, as the battle roiled around him, Castiel found himself at the head of the column: the left flank had fallen into disarray at the arrival of the Serpent and his children, and at the vanguard Jehoel was beset by hell hounds, their fetid jaws cleaving great gashes in the fabric of his grace. Castiel turned away, horrified, determined, and hacked his way through the demon horde. He was only dimly aware of the cries of his brothers and sisters of the garrison as they were forced to fall back, until he realised that he stood alone and hesitated. “Go, Castiel!” Ishim commanded. Within his grasp a lesser demon writhed and wailed, until Ishim smote it and it burst into flame. “It is down to you to find him!" 

When he slew the last of the hell-spawn and was able to pause to take stock of his surroundings, Castiel found himself within the inner web of Hell. He was filthy with ichor and exhausted, and he was wounded, where a demon had slashed at him with ragged claws. The way seemed open. The Righteous Man was perceptible to him, and it seemed, though he could not understand it, that no resistance stood in his path. 

“Dean Winchester,” he said, to the soul he found crouched over a table of wicked, bloody devices.

“Who the fuck are you?” it snarled in the face of Castiel’s radiance, and Castiel subdued it before it could raise the mace clutched in its fist. He took hold of the man's soul and began the ascent.

By the time Dean Winchester was free, Castiel was exhausted. He gazed, briefly, upon the wasted land to which the man’s body had been committed and surveyed the destruction made by his salvation. With the little strength remaining to him, he sent out a message, that all the Host should know their task had been completed: _Dean Winchester is saved_. There was little to do then but wait.

When, hours or minutes later, Dean Winchester arose, his fear reverberated with the volume of a thousand screaming voices; it clamoured at Castiel’s consciousness like a bell struck too hard and on the verge of shattering into pieces. It overwhelmed him and caused him such pain that he fled in his confusion, retreating until the violence of Dean Winchester’s fear receded. The man was praying, that much was clear. A litany of curses and imprecations: _what the fuck, man, oh God, not this, not this, not this_ \- 

He watched from a distance as Dean Winchester dragged himself from his grave. He crept closer, followed him carefully to the side of a road, to a ramshackle building, and prepared himself to approach, the way Gabriel had once come unto Samuel.

 _Dean Winchester_ , he said, while the man cast about for the source of the disturbance in the electromagnetic waves powering the television, _be not afraid._

He watched, frustrated, as the glass in the building’s windows shattered.

  


* * *

  


Failure is not a feeling Castiel has learned to wear lightly. Chuck has not been trapped and the orb has been destroyed. The journey into Purgatory, a place he had never wanted to set foot again for as long as the universe existed, has all been for nothing.

Eileen is gone, and Castiel can feel the wound left by it on Sam’s already injured soul, agony emanating from him in waves he wishes he were strong enough to shut out. There is nothing he can do to help. He wishes he were strong enough for that, too: he used to be able to lay a hand on Sam’s shoulder in passing and snatch away a little of the fatigue, the doubt, the regret. As it is, he has to watch Sam depart for bed without being able to do anything to reassure or comfort him.

“I need sleep,” Dean announces, knocking back the contents of his glass. It’s clear he intends to disappear to his room the way Sam has, and Castiel can’t bear it, the idea of Dean slipping away from him too, after everything they’ve been through.

Dean says nothing when Castiel follows him down the hall, fails to comment when Castiel turns left instead of right and follows him into his bedroom. There’s a hunted sort of tension in the line of Dean’s shoulders, but Castiel vows that he will weather whatever argument it provokes, because Dean will have to resort to physically throwing him out of this room, if he wants him to leave.

“Dean,” he says, when Dean studiously ignores him and begins emptying his pockets of their usual cargo of weaponry and concealed stashes of alcohol. He places them side by side on the dresser by the writing desk: his second-best knife, his hip flask, his wallet. “Can we talk?”

Dean continues to sift through the personal effects he keeps on the dresser, fingers alighting on a dog-eared paperback book, an antique Philadelphia Deringer he found in one of the store rooms, a Led Zeppelin guitar pick he keeps even though he doesn’t know how to play more than three chords on the guitar, picking them up and then putting them down again, affecting to be busy. “What’s it look like we’re doing?”

Castiel closes the door behind him and steps closer, hands spread, considering how best to make his approach. “You spoke to me once,” he says, quietly, "about the folly of trusting to the hope of a better future.”

Dean shrugs. “You remember that, huh?”

“I’ve thought about it, often."

“Great. And you’re bringing it up now because...?”

Castiel hesitates. He watches the taut lines of Dean’s back shift beneath his shirt. In the forest in Wyoming, he had stabbed a monster to death. He had healed a child’s injury and felt his grace being wrung from him, and he had made a number of momentous decisions in a remarkably short space of time. “I’ve begun to see the merit of your argument."

There is a long moment in which Dean appears to sag, his shoulders rounding like a puppet with the strings cut. When he rallies, it’s to turn on Castiel with fury in his expression, his hands clenched into fists.

“What do want me to do with that?” he demands. "For cryin’ out loud, Cas, chalk it up to me being tanked up and stupid, just shooting my mouth off, I don’t care - we both know it ain’t the first time I’ve gotten sloppy and maudlin and made plays I had no business making.”

Castiel studies Dean's face, with its familiar, beloved lines and the glow of his soul hovering just above it. His soul is known to Castiel, from the inside out, in a way that still makes looking at Dean a lot like pulling on the old, soft-smelling sweater he had taken with him from the bunker the day Dean had left him at the Greyhound station. It’s familiar and warm in his chest, and it’s most of the reason he had needed to leave, this time around, because anger had bubbled and blistered beneath his skin and he hadn’t been able to bear looking at Dean without wanting to forgive him. He sighs. “Are you being deliberately obtuse?”

“I’m trying real hard not to be,” Dean snaps. “All this bullshit - I don’t even know what’s me anymore. All the fucked up shit I’ve said to you these past few months, and you just wanna relive the time I tried to put the moves on you in front of some shitty movie? This ain’t _fixed_ , Cas."

Every pore, every paper-cut wrinkle of Dean Winchester’s face is so familiar to him, and so well-loved. He watches Dean cycle through the usual round of feeling undeserving and pretending not to care.

“Do you remember Lily Sunder’s anger, upon losing a child?” he asks gravely. “Do you remember begging her to save Jack, so you wouldn’t have to go through the same thing? Sometimes, I’ve been so angry, I would have torn the earth in two, if I thought it would have changed anything. But I’m not angry, anymore, Dean.”

Dean stares at him, his eyes dark and serious. “I'm so fucking sorry, Cas,” he says, in the end, like he has to tear the words from his chest.

“So am I,” Castiel says.

Every poor choice he has made, every time he has watched Dean’s face collapse minutely into betrayal, disappointment and despair, has led them here, just as much as Dean’s mistakes. Castiel steps into what Dean once demarcated as his personal space. It’s a boundary which Castiel has disregarded for as long as he they have known one another, and which Dean has singularly failed to enforce. Dean’s skin is warm beneath his fingers. “Dean,” he says. “I forgive you."

“Shut up,” Dean mutters, turning his face into Castiel’s palm. “Just - shut up.”

  


* * *

  


Over the years, Castiel has become intimately familiar with Dean’s prayers. At first, immediately after his salvation, Castiel had been concerned that Dean’s soul had left some reciprocal, indelible mark upon his grace, because all he had heard was Dean: Dean, afraid; Dean, alone and asking for guidance; Dean, so grateful to find his way back to his family. It had been maddening, unsustainable, and he had complained to Ishim about it. Ishim had merely smiled and said he was being rewarded: he was to descend and take a vessel, and do his best to guide Dean Winchester along the path of Heaven’s design.

At first, Castiel assumed that Dean must have known how often and how loudly he prayed, and that he did it deliberately. Then, when he realised Dean prayed without even meaning to, it pleased him. He was glad to hear Dean’s voice in his head, a fascinating hum of mundane, beautiful, human thoughts. When he told Dean how often he prayed without thinking about it, Dean was furious. He slung angry words at Castiel about privacy and respect and since that day Castiel had learned only to listen when Dean sought him out by name. Nevertheless, the awareness of Dean’s consciousness had sat warmly beside him, a constant comfort, nestled inside his grace. When he fell, the first thing he noticed was the silence, and then the cold, and it was like there was a void, a lacuna, right inside him, another dimension to the emptiness left where his grace had resided.

In Purgatory, a Leviathan’s blossom clutched in his hand, Dean’s voice pours into him, filling him from the ground up.

 _Cas, I’m sorry,_ Dean says, amongst other terrible, longed-for things. _Never thought of having anything like a love of my life, but turns out it’s what you are, and I can’t change it, and I have_ tried _, Cas. I’ve never expected anything, and I know I don’t fucking deserve it, but I need you to come back. Remember that? I need you._

Everything Castiel has done, since he watched Dean crawl from his grave, has been for the Winchesters. Every time he has stumbled, blindly, into another bewildering encounter with humanity; everything he has sacrificed to keep Dean and his brother safe. Sometimes his pride, his hubris, has meant that he has failed, but he has tried. Every day he has strived, and it has all been for this: because - in his admittedly impartial, flawed view - humanity, the Winchesters, Dean most particularly, are the greatest, most beautiful articles of all of God’s creation. He can’t hate Chuck for that. He has loved them since he comprehended the meaning of the word.

  


* * *

  


In the quiet hum of the bunker’s air filtration system, with Dean’s bedroom door closed behind them, Dean kisses him.

He has one hand curled in the collar of Cas’ shirt, as though he expects Cas to disappear. He breaks away to snatch a breath, gulping it down, and gasps Castiel’s name like it causes him pain. He kisses him again, cupping Castiel’s face in shaking hands. He kisses him a third and a fourth time, fingers in Castiel’s hair, a trembling pressure on the back of his neck, hauling him so close it’s as though he’s trying to break Cas apart and climb inside.

“Tell me this is you, Cas,” Dean says, his forehead sweaty and pressed hard against Castiel’s own, hands hesitating on the lapels of his coat. “I need you to say you want this.”

“Yes, Dean: it’s me, I do.”

Dean groans like Castiel has wounded him. He kisses him again while he pulls apart the knot of Castiel’s tie, mouths his way down to Castiel’s throat, lips catching on stubble. He bites at the skin under Castiel’s jaw, sucks a hard bruise into his neck, making Castiel arch up into his hands. A ragged sound falls from his mouth that he did not expect; he has never sounded so human, as Dean presses him back against the wall and Castiel’s thighs fall open around him, the heat and the fervour of him like a wildfire setting Castiel alight.

“Dean,” he says. “Please.”

“Lemme look at you,” Dean mutters against his skin. “Cas, c’mon, I wanna see you.”

With barely a thought, Castiel bares his vessel before Dean; he offers it to Dean as a gift, an apology. His cock is hard against Dean’s clothed thigh and Dean’s hands are damp with sweat, clutching at his waist. He shudders, rolling his hips into the swell of Dean’s leg.

“Holy shit, Cas,” Dean says reverently, sounding shocked. He stares down the length of him; Castiel leans against the wall breathing heavily and allows him to look. Dean bends his head and presses open-mouthed kisses to the base of his throat, and Castiel jerks against him, trapped between the heat of Dean along his front and the cool wall at his back. It is overwhelming, in a way he had forgotten since regaining his grace. “You’re fucking - you’re _glowing_. Are you doing that on purpose?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel says, honestly, while his grace sings and swells within him. “Dean, I would also like to see you.”

“Fuck,” Dean says, immediately beginning to shrug off his shirt. “Can’t you whammy me naked, too?”

“I could,” Castiel admits. Dean is stealing glances between peeling off his t-shirt, thigh still wedged between Castiel’s knees. He can feel Dean’s breath on his face when he leans in to press against him. He drives his hands over the plane of Dean’s back, following the path of his spine. Dean arches beneath his hand, sucking air through his teeth as though Castiel’s touch burns him. “I’d rather take my time undressing you.”

Dean takes Castiel’s lower lip between his teeth before soothing it with his tongue. He licks his way into Castiel’s mouth and Castiel clutches at him, pressing himself closer, wanting Dean to feel how much he is wanted. His cock is leaking against Dean’s stomach, dragging on the buckle of Dean’s belt, and it’s too much, more than Castiel has ever felt in this body while in possession of all his senses; his grace sparks inside him, lighting up every place Dean’s fingers touch.

Nosing at the corner of his jaw, Dean gets a hand around him, his knuckles digging into Castiel’s stomach and his thumb smearing the slick moisture at the head. “So f’ckin’ beautiful,” Dean mutters into his shoulder, chasing the words with his mouth. Castiel is bucking into his grasp without meaning to, gasping and overwhelmed, and when Dean puts an inch of space between them again he grunts at the shock of it, clutching at him, trying to tug him back in. “Woah, hang on,” Dean says, with a hand still tight around his cock. “Let me just -"

“Dean,” Castiel says, as Dean drops heavily to his knees. “This wasn’t the way I wanted -"

“Don’t worry, I got you. We got time for all of it,” Dean says.

  


* * *

  


There is not a great deal of difference between anger and wrath. Castiel lost sight of the distinction between them years ago, when Raphael declared that the Apocalypse would resume just because he wanted it so, and everything Castiel had done to keep these beautiful, flawed creations of his father’s safe began to crumble to dust in the palms of his hands. Every step along the path toward assuming Godhead had been paved with good intentions, and it had culminated in Castiel’s wrath making him a fratricide many thousands of times over. He remembers, distantly, the way Dean had tried to stand in his way, foolish and resolute. He has always felt humbled in the face of Dean’s immense, human bravery.

Casting a baited line sets in motion a process Castiel is hoping to learn to appreciate. It involves an inordinate amount of waiting, followed by, possibly, a moment of frantic action and intense excitement; Castiel wouldn’t know, he hasn’t caught anything, yet. His predominant experience of fishing has been the waiting.

The point is that standing very still, knee-deep in a gently flowing stream, with nothing but the sound of birdsong and the creaking of the boughs of overhanging trees to disturb him, he had hoped to find peace.

Despite his best intentions, anger is a cold, sickening feeling in the very pit of his gut; a swooping, all-encompassing thing that prevents him from grieving the way he expected. He’ll be deep in the cool, murmuring waters of the river, sunk in the misery of reliving those helpless moments in the cemetery, when Jack’s body had crumpled onto the grass, and he’ll hear it: _Cas, where are - Why’d you - Fuck you - Always knew you’d -_ The familiar sound of Dean Winchester intoxicated and trying not to pray.

His grip on the rod is too tight. Andy says the fish can feel his agitation and it makes them wary. He relaxes his shoulders and flicks his wrist to cast the line again.

 _This was not my doing_ , he thinks while he waits, as though Dean might somehow hear him in return.

Anger is not a weapon; it is the emptiness in Castiel’s chest, the knowledge that he cannot go home. It is the untethered feeling of being shut out from Heaven and adrift from the only other place he has ever really believed he might belong. All those years ago, in Hell, Dean’s soul had glowed like a beacon, radiant and bruised and good. Anger is the fleeting, insincere wish that he had never been the one to set eyes upon it.

_This was not my doing. I am not the only one to blame._

  


* * *

  


Castiel is flexing his fingers in the crumpled sheet tucked down the sides of the mattress, one arm flung out to steady himself against the onslaught of sensation. His other hand is grasping at Dean’s damp, slippery skin, sliding off the planes of his shoulders, settling at his hip, gripping there.

“ _Dean_ ,” he says fervently and Dean curses above him, dipping his head and tucking his sweaty forehead against Castiel’s, pushing gasping, open kisses into his mouth.

“Holy shit,” Dean says. He’s between Castiel’s open thighs and every point of contact between their burning skin is a bright, overwhelming marker on an unfamiliar map.

Dean kisses him, invites Castiel’s tongue into his mouth and groans around it. He is everywhere: inside Castiel and around him. It’s more than Castiel ever dared to imagine, on lonely nights in a motel in the Mid-west, hungry and afraid, when he had wrapped a hand around the insistent erection he hadn’t yet entirely understood. The first time, he’d cried when he came, getting seminal fluid all over the sweater that still smelled like Dean, and then spent fifteen minutes hunched over the bathroom sink, cursing himself while he frantically tried to wipe it clean.

“Hey,” Dean says, driving into him slowly, the arm beside Castiel’s head, holding him up, trembling. He reaches sweaty fingers to the side of Castiel’s face, pushes them unsteadily into his damp hair. “You good?”

Castiel kisses him. He does not want the tenderness, the worry that falls across Dean’s face; not in this moment, when he is already overwhelmed. Dean abandons his concern, collapsing to his elbows, sinking into the heat of the two of them joined like this, from chest to hips, letting Castiel lick deeply into his mouth.

He is trapped by Dean’s body, caged by his arms, but they are moving now as though they are one sinuous entity. He can almost believe, for a moment, that there is no distinction between his being and Dean’s.

“Holy shit,” Dean gasps again, into his mouth. “Holy shit - _Cas_ -“ and then he’s burying a noise like he’s in physical pain into Castiel’s shoulder and all the springs and coils and architecture of Castiel’s human body release at once, and euphoria spills through him, out of him, between them.

  


* * *

  


The air in Dean’s bedroom is fresh and clean-tasting thanks to the filtration system, and it's cooling Dean’s sweat, making him shiver; Castiel feels it in the shoulder pressed against his and edges closer to lend Dean his own warmth.

“How it is between you and me,” Dean murmurs, eyes on the ceiling, “I don’t have to spell it out, right? I mean, you heard me, back in Purgatory?”

Castiel glances sideways. Dean’s expression is carefully blank. Castiel’s stomach and side are sticky; so is Dean's hand, where it lies trapped between them; so are the insides of Castiel’s thighs. He aches in a pleasant, sated way. There are kiss-shaped bruises at Castiel’s throat, eight livid fingertips pressed into the flesh of Dean’s flank where Castiel had held him as they finished.

He opens his mouth to agree, but he remembers the vow he made to himself whilst knee-deep in a river in Wyoming. Dean is the bravest man Castiel has ever known; it isn’t too much to expect him to finally be able to articulate Castiel’s importance to him.

Dean frowns, as though the ceiling is irritating him with its recalcitrance. “Me and Sam, we always said: bloody or sad, it didn’t matter which. But I gotta know you’re with me. I can’t - without you, I can’t do it, man, any of it.”

“I understand,” Castiel says, taking pity on him.

Dean rolls his eyes. He shifts, turning onto his side, and leans on his elbow to peer down at him, his mouth twisted with uncertainty. “Did you just Han Solo me?”

“Dean,” Castiel says, holding his gaze. “I lived without you for countless aeons of existence; I could do it again, if forced. I’ve come to understand that just because something is possible, doesn’t mean it would be bearable. Nor,” he adds ruefully, "that I would want to survive it.”

There is an unspoken thread of grief spooling between them, even now. Castiel does not say that, with Jack gone, he has already lost more than he ever thought he could bear. He is here, in large part, because he doesn’t know where else there is for him to be.

Dean is staring at him. “Yeah,” he says, something catching in his voice. He clears his throat. “Yeah, guess we understand each other."

Dean winces when he hauls himself out of bed. They have not been gentle with one another. Need met answering need, and Castiel does not regret it. Dean stretches and the long, solid lines of his torso are displayed, for a moment, in a way that is so unselfconscious and enticing that Castiel thinks he ought to look away. He expects Dean to begin dressing, and expects to be expected to do the same, but Dean simply strolls over to the dresser and grabs a bottle of whiskey. He tips back his head and swallows some, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, before waving the bottle in Castiel’s direction with his eyebrows raised.

“No, thank you,” Castiel says, and Dean shrugs, placing the bottle back on its stand. Castiel decides it is time to make a move towards giving Dean his space; he has limited experience of the negotiation of these situations, but always anticipated an outcome such as this one, should it arise between himself and Dean. He slips out of bed and hesitates on the verge of manifesting himself back into his clothes, not wishing to appear rude.

Dean is standing opposite him on the other side of the bed. His hair’s a mess and the bruises at his hip, where Castiel had fitted his hands and hauled him closer, are darkening by the minute. He’s frowning at the suit pants that have materialised in Castiel’s hands. “Did you just - Where the hell’re you going?”

“To my room, so you can get some sleep.”

Dean climbs back into the bed and sprawls there, sheets pooling around his waist. He is painfully beautiful, flushed and bruised and defiant. “That what you want? Or do I look like a guy who’s about to have a crisis about this?”

The fact is, there is nothing Castiel would like more than to clamber back into the space beside Dean and tuck himself inside it. He would like to slide his hands over the plane of Dean’s stomach, fit his mouth to the curve of Dean’s shoulder, lick the sweat from the hollow of his throat. He’s surprised by it; his previous experience had led him to believe that desire was a purely biological urge and that, having exercised it, he could expect it to be sated.

“Cas,” Dean says quietly, watching him vacillate. “I ain’t gonna beg. Likelihood is, we’re not gonna get much chance for R’n’R once we work out what the hell we’re gonna do next. It might be a one-time offer; just take it, alright?”

Castiel supposes he must look foolish, naked and clutching his pants in front of him like a shield. “My lack of need for sleep hasn't changed.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Lie here counting sheep, meditate, I don’t care, man. Just get in here before I freeze my ass off.”

Castiel gives in. He places the pants in a loosely folded pile on top of the dresser. When he kissed Dean in the kitchen, months ago, he’d been waiting for the Empty to ooze into existence around him. Now, he realises his mistake: his own fear prevents him from being happy, the same way Dean’s does. If anything, the confirmation of their need for one another only sharpens its intensity. Having given in to this fills him with a new kind of terror.

Once, in a sleeping bag in the back room of a Gas’N’Sip in Rexford, Idaho, Castiel had allowed himself to wallow in the tumult of emotions he’d been experiencing since Dean appeared in the parking lot and set all of his well-laid plans in disarray. That morning he’d watched the Impala’s rear lights pull away until they disappeared around a bend in the road and it had felt like a hand had reached into his chest and squeezed until his human lungs no longer wanted him to breathe. His feelings had kept bubbling up and surging, until he’d felt like they’d spill out of him altogether: loneliness and fear and the desire, however hopeless, for Dean to call to say he’d changed his mind and he was returning to take Cas back home to the bunker, after all. He’d lain on his back in his sleeping bag on the cold linoleum floor of the break room and stared into the soft glow cast by the lights in the vending machine, feeling like a speck on the face of the universe, and asked himself what it had all been for.

Dean grunts over his shoulder for Castiel to hurry up, so he clambers back into bed and pulls the comforter over both of them. He tucks himself along the hard, warm line of Dean’s body and folds a hand under the pillow beneath his head. For once, this is a decision that will hurt no one. After every ordeal, everyone who has fallen by the wayside, here stand the two of them, with nothing particular left to do but stumble toward one another in the dark.

Dean’s back is turned, his shoulders rising and falling with slow, easy breaths. Carefully, Castiel reaches out to curl a hand around the place his fingers marked with bruises. Dean shifts against him, the heat between them becoming close and comforting. He murmurs something too quiet for Castiel to make out and lets out a long, exhausted sigh. Castiel breathes in the sweat-damp smell of him.

It would not be true to say that angels dream, but Castiel floats for a while in a space between conscious thought and imagination: Chuck defeated, the Winchesters saved, safe and alive. Hope is dangerous here, where the Empty is close by and waiting.

Once, Castiel had stood witness as Roman legionaries carried the sacred things away from the Temple. He saw its walls cast down and the spoils loaded onto ships and baggage trains bound for Rome; he watched her swell, gross and decadent, gorging on Jerusalem’s plunder. In the decades that followed, Gabriel descended, as he had done before to comfort Daniel, and talked at length with the teachers. He persuaded them to set the rulings down in writing, to codify the wisdom they had gained in interpreting God’s word. It was not long before his desertion, and Castiel had sensed his frustration and been perplexed and worried by it. After Gabriel’s disappearance, he had wandered from his post keeping watch over the city, peering with curiosity upon the agonies Judah endured as he attempted to wrestle the stories of a hundred scholars into a shape that could be pinned to the page with the written word, trying to understand what it was that Gabriel had heard that had troubled him so.

It was there that Uriel had found him, watching the scribes recline in the shade of a poplar tree while Judah debated with the sages.

“They are in need of another teacher,” Castiel told him. “Without Gabriel, they bicker. Nothing has been written since he left.”

“What does a soldier know of teaching?” Uriel asked, because Castiel was not yet his superior. “Leave it to the professionals, Castiel.”

And so Castiel had slunk back to his post, while Uriel descended to converse with Judah in the guise of a rabbi from Usha. Still, when Uriel was occupied, away on business he did not deign to share with Castiel, Castiel had returned to listen.

"Whenever love depends on some selfish end, when the end passes away, the love passes away; but if it does not depend on some selfish end, it will never pass away.” Castiel remembers Judah’s voice, sonorous and rich, and the way it had broken, filled with tears, as he gave the examples to underline his point. “Which did not depend on a selfish end? This was the love of David and Jonathan.”

The breeze from the vents is still cold on Castiel’s exposed shoulder. The points of contact beneath the comforter, where Dean’s skin is moulded to his, are too hot. Castiel defies anything - Chuck; Duma; the oozing, sinuous voice that murmurs behind his closed eyelids about its plans to devour him - to make him leave this bed before the morning.

“I understand, now,” he murmurs into the hot, damp skin of Dean’s neck, after a few long moments of listening to Dean breathe. “About the imaginary nature of the sheep.”

“Good for you, buddy,” Dean replies, already mostly asleep. He grasps at Castiel’s hand and tugs it around himself, so that Castiel is draped over and around him like a blanket.

Outside, beyond the cocoon of the bunker, waits a universe still full of monsters. Castiel chooses to bow his head and close his eyes, his nose tucked into the warm curve of Dean’s shoulder.


End file.
